Route reliability record
TPA→HOU
Tampa to Houston
- Flights
- 1,032
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 781 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,032 TPA to HOU flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly TPA to HOU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.7%, against 81.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,025 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.4% on time across 1,032 flights
These figures cover 1,032 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 TPA 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 | 1,032 | 81.4% | 56 min | 0.39% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tampa 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. TPA → IAHTampa to Houston | United Airlines | 87.0% | 87.3% | 0.29% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. TPA → HOUTampa to Houston | Southwest Airlines | 81.1% | 81.4% | 0.39% | 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 36 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–8am366 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am38 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm224 flights83.0%
- 2pm–5pm39 flights82.1%
- 5pm–8pm217 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am148 flights58.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.9% on time, against 94.5% 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 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 October, when the on-time rate falls to 73.4%. January is the strongest month at 88.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. May was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.0%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
51% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 10,778 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 94.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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
6.0% 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 about 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 75.2% on time across 1,021 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,032 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 HOU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,032 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 81.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,025 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to HOU questions
How often is TPA to HOU delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.6% of the 1,032 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is TPA to HOU compared with the rest of the country?
81.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to HOU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.9%, 36 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 October delays on TPA to HOU?
October is the weakest month at 73.4% on time, compared with 88.5% in January. Across the year that is 15 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 TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.9%
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. TPA to HOU and HOU to TPA 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.