Route reliability record
OKC→HOU
Oklahoma City to Houston
- Flights
- 1,217
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 419 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 1,217 OKC to HOU flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly OKC to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.9%, against 82.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 49 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,207 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.74%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.2% on time across 1,217 flights
These figures cover 1,217 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 OKC to HOU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,217 | 82.2% | 53 min | 0.74% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Oklahoma City 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. OKC → IAHOklahoma City to Houston | SkyWest Airlines | 85.9% | 86.8% | 1.01% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 5531 13:45 |
| 2. OKC → HOUOklahoma City to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 81.6% | 82.2% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am263 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am213 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm253 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm226 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm214 flights69.0%
- 8pm–5am48 flights81.2%
Scale runs 60% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 69.0% for the evening window. That is 25 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 263 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter OKC to HOU 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 OKC to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 69.0%, a wide gap of 25.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.2%
- 8–11am93.8%
- 11am–2pm79.4%
- 2–5pm73.2%
- 5–8pm69.0%
- 8pm–5am81.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 75.8%. January is the strongest month at 95.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. October was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 to one. The split is drawn from 11,448 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, 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 actually costs
5.4% 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 roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 419 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.7% on time across 1,216 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,217 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HOU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 95.8% on time and March 75.8%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,207 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OKC to HOU questions
How often is OKC to HOU delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.8% of the 1,217 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is OKC to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
82.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OKC to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.0%, 25 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 March delays on OKC to HOU?
March is the weakest month at 75.8% on time, compared with 95.8% in January. Across the year that is 20 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
- HOU to OKC — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- OKC to DFW, a related route79.3%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- OKC to DEN, a related route80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.2%
- 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. OKC to HOU and HOU to OKC 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.