Carrier route record

OOTUL→IAH

SkyWest Airlines · Tulsa to Houston

Flights: 787
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 2

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

SkyWest on TUL to IAH lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 787 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's TUL to IAH record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 780 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.5%

Every carrier on TUL to IAH, 1,123 flights

These figures cover 787 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 TUL to IAH

SkyWest flew 787 of the 1,123 flights on TUL to IAH, most of the route. Its 82.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.2% to SkyWest at 82.6%. One 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 TUL to IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlinesthin sample	336	89.2%	66 min	0.89%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	787	82.6%	91 min	0.38%	B+

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 13 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–8am5 flights—
8am–11am79 flights79.7%
11am–2pm297 flights90.5%
2pm–5pm405 flights77.1%
5pm–8pm1 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 77.1%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 405 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on TUL to IAH through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 73.0%. February is the strongest month at 92.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. November was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 12,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
36%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
10%

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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 12,403 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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

8.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 429 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 83.1% on time across 784 flights, within half a point 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. 787 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 TUL to IAH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 787 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 780 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