Carrier route record
OOPHX→IAH
SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to Houston
- Flights
- 180
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PHX to IAH sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 180 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,780 at 84.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on PHX to IAH runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 50 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 175 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.3%
Every carrier on PHX to IAH, 2,927 flights
These figures cover 180 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to IAH
SkyWest flew 180 of the 2,927 flights on PHX to IAH, about 6% of it. Its 72.6% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.6% to SkyWest at 72.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 75.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 622 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,780 | 84.6% | 84 min | 0.56% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 68 | 81.8% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 277 | 78.5% | 62 min | 1.08% | B |
| American Airlines | 622 | 75.3% | 68 min | 1.45% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 180 | 72.6% | 81 min | 2.78% | C |
United leads American by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am77 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm69 flights65.7%
- 2pm–5pm34 flights76.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.7% on time against 77.0% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 77 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on PHX to IAH through the year
- Oct–Dec 202523 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202699 flights69.5%
- Apr–Jun 202658 flights70.2%
Scale runs 60% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.6% on time across 180 flights.
Split by quarter, SkyWest on PHX to IAH logged 23 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 99 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 58 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest 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 3,876 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
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 3,876 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 3,876 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 1,515 of the 3,876 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.78%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,009 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 runs 69.7% on time across 180 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 180 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on PHX to IAH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 180 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 72.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to IAH, every carrier
- SkyWest on IAH to PHX, the return leg
- United Airlines on PHX to IAH84.6%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to IAH78.5%
- American Airlines on PHX to IAH75.3%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.