Carrier route record
UAMSP→IAH
United Airlines · Minneapolis to Houston
- Flights
- 639
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 639 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MSP to IAH record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 633 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.2%
Every carrier on MSP to IAH, 1,940 flights
These figures cover 639 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on MSP to IAH
United flew 639 of the 1,940 flights on MSP to IAH, about 33% of it. Its 87.4% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.4% 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) | 639 | 87.4% | 59 min | 0.78% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,278 | 79.7% | 62 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 77.3% | 110 min | 0.00% | 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.
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am209 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am92 flights97.8%
- 11am–2pm156 flights89.7%
- 2pm–5pm85 flights84.7%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights76.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 97.8% of the time, against 76.0% for the evening window. That is 22 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 209 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. July was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on MSP to IAH runs when it is late
United on MSP to IAH often beats the schedule: 287 of 633 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 80 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 25 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early287 flights45.3%
- Within 15 min266 flights42.0%
- 15–29 min late33 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late22 flights3.5%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late8 flights1.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 633 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 70 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. 29 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on MSP to IAH
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 August 2026, 5 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 August 2026 | 5 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 11 November 2025 | 4 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 June 2026 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 August 2026 | 3 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 4,749 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,906 of the 4,749 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,749 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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 3.9% 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.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 638 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 639 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. 639 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 87.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 633 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 IAH79.7%
- 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 7.05 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.