Carrier route record
UAMCO→IAH
United Airlines · Orlando to Houston
- Flights
- 2,472
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MCO to IAH 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 2,472 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 536 at 82.2% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MCO to IAH record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,452 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.0%
Every carrier on MCO to IAH, 3,670 flights
These figures cover 2,472 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
United against every carrier on MCO to IAH
United flew 2,472 of the 3,670 flights on MCO to IAH, most of the route. Its 84.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.1% to Spirit at 74.3%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 82.2% of the time; Spirit Airlines manages 74.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 662 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 2,472 | 84.1% | 89 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 536 | 82.2% | 74 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlines | 662 | 74.3% | 71 min | 2.57% | C |
Frontier leads Spirit by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on MCO to IAH
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am359 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm536 flights92.9%
- 2pm–5pm530 flights80.7%
- 5pm–8pm624 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am59 flights87.7%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 92.9% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 70.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 624 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MCO to IAH through the year
July is the worst month at 70.5% on time, 23 points below January, the best at 93.6%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 236 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.9%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
36% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 34,886 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, 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 costs
7.5% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 854 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 85.1% on time across 2,471 flights, within about a point 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 2,472 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on MCO to IAH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 93.6% on time and July 70.5%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,452 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to IAH, every carrier
- United on IAH to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to IAH82.2%
- Spirit Airlines on MCO to IAH74.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.