Carrier route record
UAMSP→IAH
United Airlines · Minneapolis to Houston
- Flights
- 540
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MSP to IAH earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 540 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MSP to IAH record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 108 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 533 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.11%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.9%
Every carrier on MSP to IAH, 1,835 flights
These figures cover 540 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 MSP to IAH
United flew 540 of the 1,835 flights on MSP to IAH, about 29% of it. Its 88.4% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.4% to SkyWest at 77.3%. 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) | 540 | 88.4% | 61 min | 1.11% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,272 | 77.8% | 60 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 77.3% | 110 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 27 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–8am194 flights87.8%
- 8am–11am105 flights96.2%
- 11am–2pm116 flights91.3%
- 2pm–5pm85 flights84.7%
- 5pm–8pm40 flights69.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 69.2% for the evening window. That is 27 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 194 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MSP to IAH through the year
December is the weak month at 66.7% on time, against 100.0% 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. May was the busiest month here, with 63 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 3,807 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,675 of the 3,807 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,807 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 1,313 minutes out of 3,807, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
The 1,034 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 540 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 540 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 MSP to IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 540 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 88.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 533 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to IAH, every carrier
- United on IAH to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to IAH77.8%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.