WN4

WN4 arrived on time 95.2% of the time, against 81.3% for all HOU → DAL flights, so this departure is 13.9 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against Southwest Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 13.9 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 659 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If WN4 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

This flight stays close to typical even on its worst days, a smaller gap than 98% of 11,788 comparable flight numbers.

A typical arrival is 12 min early, and the worst tenth are only 15 minutes worse than that.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for WN4 on HOU → DAL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

WN4 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 8.3 hours on the ground at HOU, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.

When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, WN4 pushed back an average of 1 minute early; when it came in on time or early, an average of 0 minutes early.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into HOU just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 545 of 650 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

WN4 pushes back an average of 0.9 minutes early and reaches the gate at DAL an average of 8.8 minutes early. The 7.9 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. Its 11.1 minutes on the taxiways at HOU is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.

On arrival at DAL, WN4 spends 5.5 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at DAL spends on the ground before reaching the gate.

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached DAL. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 7,722 departures from HOU scheduled in the clock hour WN4 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at DAL (224,035 flights), not just WN4’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

WN4 is scheduled out of HOU at 7:00 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from HOU in that hour arrive on time 91.8% of the time against 78.8% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 13.0 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from HOU to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route WN4 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. WN4 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• WN1636 HOU→DAL Southwest Airlines on the same route, departs 6:00 AM, on time 94.4%
• WN54 HOU→DAL Southwest Airlines on the same route, departs 8:30 PM, on time 72.9%
• WN52 HOU→DAL Southwest Airlines on the same route, departs 7:00 PM, on time 73.5%