Carrier route record

UAMSY→IAH

United Airlines · New Orleans to Houston

Flights: 2,784
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 94%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on MSY to IAH lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,784 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's MSY to IAH record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,768 completed flights

Avg delay

74 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.47%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.2%

Every carrier on MSY to IAH, 2,961 flights

These figures cover 2,784 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 MSY to IAH

United flew 2,784 of the 2,961 flights on MSY to IAH, most of the route. Its 82.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.4% to SkyWest at 75.0%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	2,784	82.4%	74 min	0.47%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	27	80.8%	305 min	3.70%	B−
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	146	77.9%	65 min	0.68%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	4	75.0%	122 min	0.00%	B+

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on MSY to IAH

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 16 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–8am709 flights86.9%
8am–11am347 flights90.5%
11am–2pm334 flights83.4%
2pm–5pm718 flights80.5%
5pm–8pm639 flights74.7%
8pm–5am37 flights83.8%

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 90.5% of the time, against 74.7% for the evening 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 718 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on MSY to IAH through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 72.1%. January is the strongest month at 91.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. April was the busiest month here, with 265 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.2%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 36,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
4%

36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 35,992 reported delay minutes.

38% 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 14,000 minutes out of 36,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, below the national 1.81% 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

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 305 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 82.9% on time across 2,783 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.

The sample behind these figures is 2,784 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking United on MSY to IAH

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 91.9% on time and May 72.1%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,768 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures