Carrier route record
UAMFE→IAH
United Airlines · McAllen to Houston
- Flights
- 409
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MFE 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 409 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MFE to IAH record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 406 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.49%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.7%
Every carrier on MFE to IAH, 737 flights
These figures cover 409 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
United against every carrier on MFE to IAH
United flew 409 of the 737 flights on MFE to IAH, most of the route. Its 84.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to SkyWest at 76.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page) | 409 | 84.5% | 79 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 76.0% | 175 min | 0.91% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on MFE to IAH
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.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 409 flights.
- 5am–8am365 flights83.7%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm35 flights88.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 88.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
United on MFE to IAH through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 64.5%. August is the strongest month at 96.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 32 points. January was the busiest month here, with 59 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 77.8%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on MFE to IAH runs when it is late
United on MFE to IAH often beats the schedule: 107 of 406 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 63 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 15 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early107 flights26.4%
- Within 15 min236 flights58.1%
- 15–29 min late29 flights7.1%
- 30–59 min late15 flights3.7%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late10 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 406 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 30 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 1 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for United on MFE to IAH
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 May 2026, 14 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 May 2026 | 14 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 July 2026 | 10 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 October 2025 | 5 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 June 2026 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 December 2025 | 3 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
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 4,963 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,963 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 to one. The split is drawn from 4,963 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,684 minutes out of 4,963, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.49%, 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 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 316 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.5% on time across 409 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. 409 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on MFE to IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 409 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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 406 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.