Carrier route record

UATPA→IAH

United Airlines · Tampa to Houston

Flights: 1,362
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 83%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on TPA to IAH 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 10 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 1,362 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's TPA to IAH record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,356 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.29%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.7%

Every carrier on TPA to IAH, 1,650 flights

These figures cover 1,362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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

United against every carrier on TPA to IAH

United flew 1,362 of the 1,650 flights on TPA to IAH, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.3% to Frontier at 71.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	1,362	87.3%	76 min	0.29%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	151	73.2%	99 min	1.32%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	137	71.1%	101 min	1.46%	C

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

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–8am364 flights93.7%
8am–11am285 flights89.1%
11am–2pm357 flights91.5%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm356 flights75.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.7% of the time, against 75.1% for the evening 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 364 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on TPA to IAH through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, June worst

June is the worst month at 77.1% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 95.6%. 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 124 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.5%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United 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 13,000 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
22%
Extreme weather
7%

36% 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 4,700 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,053 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 4,565 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 787 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 83.6% on time across 1,363 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.

The sample behind these figures is 1,362 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.

What to do with this

Booking United on TPA to IAH

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.6% on time and June 77.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures