Route reliability record
MAF→HOU
Midland to Houston
- Flights
- 1,357
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 441 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,357 MAF to HOU flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly MAF to HOU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.9% of the time and Saturday flights 89.4%, against 85.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,348 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
85.2% on time across 1,357 flights
These figures cover 1,357 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
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 | 1,357 | 85.2% | 62 min | 0.59% | A+ |
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. 2 of the top 3 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 | 84.7% | 85.2% | 0.59% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. MAF → IAHMidland to Houston | SkyWest Airlines | 82.9% | 83.5% | 0.67% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 3. MAF → IAHMidland to Houston | United Airlines | 80.7% | 81.6% | 1.09% | 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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am163 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am347 flights95.9%
- 11am–2pm182 flights87.8%
- 2pm–5pm334 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm326 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 95.9% of the time, against 74.5% for the evening window. That is 21 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 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 78.1%. January is the strongest month at 94.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 16 points. December was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 82.9%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 12,304 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, below the national 1.81% 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
5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 82.4% on time across 1,358 flights, within 3 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 1,357 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 May 78.1%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,348 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 14.8% of the 1,357 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MAF to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
85.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MAF to HOU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 95.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 21 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 May delays on MAF to HOU?
May is the weakest month at 78.1% on time, compared with 94.5% in January. Across the year that is 16 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 route82.7%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- MAF to DEN, a related route81.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record85.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.