Route reliability record
RSW→IAH
Fort Myers to Houston
- Flights
- 864
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 861 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 864 RSW to IAH flights, with a median arrival 18 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to IAH: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.6%, against 89.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 860 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.35%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
89.4% on time across 864 flights
These figures cover 864 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 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 RSW 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 | 864 | 89.4% | 84 min | 0.35% | A+ |
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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.
- 5am–8am318 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm199 flights97.5%
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm329 flights79.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 97.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 79.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 329 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RSW to IAH 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 RSW to IAH, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 97.5% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 79.5%, a wide gap of 18.0 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am95.0%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm97.5%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm79.5%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 75.0%. January is the strongest month at 96.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 22 points. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.0%, a spread of 9 points.
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 7,609 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,033 minutes out of 7,609, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 7,609 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.35%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 861 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 85.3% on time across 864 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 864 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. 864 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 89.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 860 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to IAH questions
How often is RSW to IAH delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.6% of the 864 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RSW to IAH compared with the rest of the country?
89.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RSW to IAH?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 97.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.5%, 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 September delays on RSW to IAH?
September is the weakest month at 75.0% on time, compared with 96.7% in January. 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 RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) delay statistics
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.4%
- ORD to IAH, a related route76.0%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.4%
- United Airlines on-time record89.4%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RSW to IAH and IAH to RSW 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.