Carrier route record

UATUL→IAH

United Airlines · Tulsa to Houston

Flights: 336
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 30%
Carriers: 2

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

United on TUL 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 336 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's TUL to IAH record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 116 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 333 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.5%

Every carrier on TUL to IAH, 1,123 flights

These figures cover 336 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 TUL to IAH

United flew 336 of the 1,123 flights on TUL to IAH, about 30% of it. Its 89.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.2% to SkyWest at 82.6%.

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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	336	89.2%	66 min	0.89%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	787	82.6%	91 min	0.38%	B+

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 16 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–8am179 flights94.9%
8am–11am52 flights90.4%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm105 flights79.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.9% of the time, against 79.0% for the evening window. That is 16 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 179 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on TUL to IAH through the year

Jul–Sep 2025136 flights94.0%
Oct–Dec 2025157 flights84.7%
Jan–Mar 202620 flights—
Apr–Jun 202623 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 89.2% on time across 336 flights.

Split by quarter, United on TUL to IAH logged 136 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 157 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 20 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 23 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 89.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 52% of the 2,365 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.

National Airspace System
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
4%

52% 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 1,235 minutes out of 2,365, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,365 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 94.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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 4.5% 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.

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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.8% on time across 338 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 336 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 United on TUL to IAH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 336 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 89.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 333 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