Route reliability record
OKC→IAH
Oklahoma City to Houston
- Flights
- 1,399
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 395 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,399 OKC to IAH flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly OKC to IAH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.1%, against 84.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,379 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.6% on time across 1,091 flights
These figures cover 1,399 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on OKC to IAH
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,091 | 85.6% | 77 min | 1.01% | A |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 308 | 80.0% | 80 min | 0.97% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on OKC to IAH
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 | 84.7% | 85.6% | 1.01% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 5531 13:45 |
| 2. OKC → HOUOklahoma City to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 82.0% | 82.7% | 0.80% | 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 18 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–8am547 flights86.2%
- 8am–11am245 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm344 flights86.7%
- 2pm–5pm99 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm164 flights70.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.4% of the time, against 70.4% for the evening window. That is 18 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 547 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
June is the worst month at 75.6% on time, 21 points below September, the best at 96.2%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 206 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 27%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 6,643 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,730 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.9% 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 395 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.3% on time across 1,399 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,399 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 IAH 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. September runs 96.2% on time and June 75.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,379 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OKC to IAH questions
How often is OKC to IAH 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 15.7% of the 1,399 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is OKC to IAH compared with the rest of the country?
84.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 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 IAH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 70.4%, 18 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 June delays on OKC to IAH?
June is the weakest month at 75.6% on time, compared with 96.2% in September. Across the year that is 21 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
- IAH to OKC — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on OKC to IAH85.6%
- United Airlines on OKC to IAH80.0%
- OKC to DFW, a related route78.5%
- ORD to IAH, a related route75.0%
- OKC to DEN, a related route79.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.6%
- United Airlines on-time record80.0%
- 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
Direction matters. OKC to IAH and IAH 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.