Route reliability record
MEM→IAH
Memphis to Houston
- Flights
- 1,075
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 468 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,075 MEM to IAH flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly MEM to IAH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.3%, against 80.9% 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
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,063 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.6% on time across 723 flights
These figures cover 1,075 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 MEM to IAH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 352 | 85.6% | 50 min | 1.42% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 723 | 78.6% | 86 min | 0.83% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on MEM to IAH
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am347 flights85.4%
- 8am–11am69 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm342 flights81.1%
- 2pm–5pm311 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm6 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 73.6% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 347 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MEM to IAH 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 IAH, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 89.9% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 73.6%, a wide gap of 16.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am85.4%
- 8–11am89.9%
- 11am–2pm81.1%
- 2–5pm73.6%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
December is the weak month at 69.2% on time, against 94.0% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.6%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 15,587 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 89.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 468 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 80.6% on time across 1,075 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,075 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 IAH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,075 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 80.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,063 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MEM to IAH questions
How often is MEM to IAH delayed?
About 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 19.1% of the 1,075 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MEM to IAH compared with the rest of the country?
80.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points 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 IAH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.6%, 16 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 December delays on MEM to IAH?
December is the weakest month at 69.2% on time, compared with 94.0% in September. Across the year that is 25 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
- IAH to MEM — the return legseparate record
- Memphis International (MEM) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- United Airlines on MEM to IAH85.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on MEM to IAH78.6%
- MEM to ATL, a related route86.2%
- ORD to IAH, a related route76.0%
- MEM to ORD, a related route74.8%
- United Airlines on-time record85.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.6%
- 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 IAH and IAH to MEM 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.