Route reliability record
OMA→IAH
Omaha to Houston
- Flights
- 828
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 781 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 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 828 OMA to IAH flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly OMA to IAH: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.6% of the time and Friday flights 91.2%, against 86.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 90 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 822 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
88.9% on time across 719 flights
These figures cover 828 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 OMA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 719 | 88.9% | 76 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 109 | 71.3% | 75 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 19 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–8am361 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am289 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm141 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights80.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.6% of the time, against 72.9% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 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 72.4% on time, 22 points below November, the best at 94.8%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.2%. 9 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 8,300 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 2,836 of the 8,300 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,300 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 91.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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 actually costs
5.0% 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.
The 781 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 75.0% on time across 829 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 828 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in IAH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 828 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 86.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 822 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to IAH questions
How often is OMA to IAH delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.4% of the 828 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is OMA to IAH compared with the rest of the country?
86.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OMA to IAH?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.9%, 19 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 OMA to IAH?
June is the weakest month at 72.4% on time, compared with 94.8% in November. Across the year that is 22 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 OMA — the return legseparate record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- United Airlines on OMA to IAH88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to IAH71.3%
- OMA to DEN, a related route76.1%
- ORD to IAH, a related route75.0%
- OMA to ORD, a related route74.5%
- United Airlines on-time record88.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.3%
- 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. OMA to IAH and IAH to OMA 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.