Route reliability record
MEM→HOU
Memphis to Houston
- Flights
- 840
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 484 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 840 MEM to HOU flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly MEM to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.2% of the time and Saturday flights 83.9%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 835 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
78.1% on time across 840 flights
These figures cover 840 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MEM 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 | 840 | 78.1% | 49 min | 0.60% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Memphis 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. MEM → IAHMemphis to Houston | SkyWest Airlines | 77.9% | 78.6% | 0.83% | 8am–11am, Tue | OO 5798 15:23 |
| 2. MEM → HOUMemphis to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 77.6% | 78.1% | 0.60% | 5am–8am, 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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am327 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am14 flights—
- 11am–2pm179 flights68.2%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm221 flights72.3%
- 8pm–5am98 flights57.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.7% on time, against 93.2% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 327 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MEM 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 MEM to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.7%, a wide gap of 35.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.2%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm68.2%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm72.3%
- 8pm–5am57.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 63.0% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 89.9%. 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 81 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.7%, a spread of 10 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 8,941 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,941 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 to one. The split is drawn from 8,941 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 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 484 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.2% on time across 840 flights, 4 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 840 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HOU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 840 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 835 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MEM to HOU questions
How often is MEM to HOU delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 840 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is MEM to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
78.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MEM to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.7%, 36 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 MEM to HOU?
July is the weakest month at 63.0% on time, compared with 89.9% in September. Across the year that is 27 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 MEM — the return legseparate record
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- MEM to ATL, a related route86.2%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- MEM to ORD, a related route74.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.1%
- 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. MEM to HOU and HOU to MEM are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed MEM to HOU’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.