Route reliability record
MAF→HOU
Midland to Houston
- Flights
- 1,362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 441 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,362 MAF to HOU flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly MAF to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.2% of the time and Saturday flights 87.7%, against 84.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,354 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.7% on time across 1,362 flights
These figures cover 1,362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MAF to HOU
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,362 | 84.7% | 59 min | 0.59% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Midland to Houston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MAF → HOUMidland to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 84.2% | 84.7% | 0.59% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. MAF → IAHMidland to Houston | United Airlines | 79.4% | 80.1% | 0.88% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am142 flights97.2%
- 8am–11am362 flights94.7%
- 11am–2pm183 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights78.2%
- 5pm–8pm336 flights74.1%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.2% of the time, against 74.1% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 362 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MAF to HOU by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MAF to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 97.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 74.1%, a wide gap of 23.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am97.2%
- 8–11am94.7%
- 11am–2pm87.4%
- 2–5pm78.2%
- 5–8pm74.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 76.5% on time, 18 points below January, the best at 94.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 81.0%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 27 to one. The split is drawn from 12,236 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 97.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 441 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 82.3% on time across 1,363 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,362 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HOU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 94.5% on time and July 76.5%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,354 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MAF to HOU questions
How often is MAF to HOU delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.3% of the 1,362 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MAF to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
84.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MAF to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.1%, 23 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on MAF to HOU?
July is the weakest month at 76.5% on time, compared with 94.5% in January. Across the year that is 18 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- HOU to MAF — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- MAF to DFW, a related route83.3%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- MAF to DEN, a related route84.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MAF to HOU and HOU to MAF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.