Route reliability record
PHX→HOU
Phoenix to Houston
- Flights
- 2,124
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,020 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,124 PHX to HOU flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly PHX to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 75.0%, against 71.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 59 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,113 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
71.4% on time across 2,124 flights
These figures cover 2,124 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PHX 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 | 2,124 | 71.4% | 47 min | 0.47% | C+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → IAHPhoenix to Houston | United Airlines | 85.3% | 85.6% | 0.40% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PHX → IAHPhoenix to Houston | American Airlines | 73.3% | 74.4% | 1.43% | 8pm–5am, Sat | — |
| 3. PHX → HOUPhoenix to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 71.1% | 71.4% | 0.47% | 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 59 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am517 flights94.6%
- 8am–11am389 flights80.4%
- 11am–2pm307 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm360 flights58.8%
- 5pm–8pm423 flights52.6%
- 8pm–5am128 flights35.9%
Scale runs 25% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 35.9% on time, against 94.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 517 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PHX 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 PHX to HOU, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.6% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 35.9%, a wide gap of 58.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.6%
- 8–11am80.4%
- 11am–2pm76.8%
- 2–5pm58.8%
- 5–8pm52.6%
- 8pm–5am35.9%
best all US flightsScale 25% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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 47.4%. January is the strongest month at 86.4%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 39 points. December was the busiest month here, with 198 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 68.2%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 to one. The split is drawn from 28,389 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 94.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, 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
6.1% 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 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,020 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 76.8% on time across 2,081 flights, 5 points above 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 2,124 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 86.4% on time and March 47.4%, a swing of 39 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,113 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to HOU questions
How often is PHX to HOU delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.6% of the 2,124 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is PHX to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
71.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 35.9%, 59 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 PHX to HOU?
March is the weakest month at 47.4% on time, compared with 86.4% in January. Across the year that is 39 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 PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.8%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.4%
- 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. PHX to HOU and HOU to PHX 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.