Route profile
SAT→IAH
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from San Antonio to Houston, 191 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 66% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 6,988 flights. How this is calculated
SAT → IAH arrives on time 83.2% of the time; the return trip, IAH → SAT, arrives on time 79.1% of the time, a 4.1-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
SAT → IAH spends 25.5 minutes on the ground on a 191-mile trip: 16.3 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SAT and 9.2 minutes from touchdown to gate at IAH.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why SAT → IAH flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SAT → IAH cancelled 100 of 6,988 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 70. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 46.0% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 152 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 100 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
46 cancellations, 46.0% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
43 cancellations, 43.0% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
11 cancellations, 11.0% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
100 coded cancellations were recorded on SAT → IAH; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
31 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 6,988 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at IAH after arriving from SAT.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 31% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 16% | High risk |
| 60 min | 10% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.9% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.2% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.43% of the time and diverts 0.09% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 6,882 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 31 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 6,988 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SAT → IAH flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 88.7% of the time, against 74.7% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 14.0 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 94.4% on time from 844 flights
- 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 84.5% on time from 1,127 flights
- 8 AM: too few flights to score
- 9 AM: 87.1% on time from 1,001 flights
- 10 AM: too few flights to score
- 11 AM: 87.8% on time from 280 flights
- 12 PM: 84.8% on time from 448 flights
- 1 PM: too few flights to score
- 2 PM: 84.2% on time from 660 flights
- 3 PM: too few flights to score
- 4 PM: 74.4% on time from 802 flights
- 5 PM: 75.1% on time from 882 flights
- 6 PM: 78.1% on time from 376 flights
- 7 PM: 81.9% on time from 532 flights
- 8 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why SAT → IAH runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for SAT → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on SAT → IAH, at 37.0%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 88.7% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 74.7%.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 6,483 | 82.9% | 1.45% | -7 min | 6.2% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 505 | 86.9% | 1.19% | -9 min | 4.4% |
United Airlines flew 92.8% of the 6,988 flights listed.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 4.0 percentage points more often than United Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA469 United Airlines | 5:30 AM | 616 | 95.0% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 6.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 88.1%
- Feb: 88.2%
- Mar: 85.0%
- Apr: 84.3%
- May: 77.7%
- Jun: 78.8%
- Jul: 76.5%
- Aug: 83.8%
- Sep: 84.9%
- Oct: 79.2%
- Nov: 87.3%
- Dec: 87.8%
July is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 11.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 81.9% from 209 flights
- August 2023: 87.7% from 215 flights
- September 2023: 80.4% from 205 flights
- October 2023: 84.0% from 200 flights
- November 2023: 89.2% from 148 flights
- December 2023: 93.5% from 153 flights
- January 2024: 85.5% from 156 flights
- February 2024: 90.1% from 131 flights
- March 2024: too few flights to score (113)
- April 2024: 86.8% from 151 flights
- May 2024: 77.4% from 145 flights
- June 2024: 84.6% from 139 flights
- July 2024: 66.3% from 200 flights
- August 2024: 84.5% from 218 flights
- September 2024: 90.9% from 231 flights
- October 2024: 81.5% from 233 flights
- November 2024: 89.1% from 222 flights
- December 2024: 85.0% from 182 flights
- January 2025: 86.4% from 177 flights
- February 2025: 84.9% from 187 flights
- March 2025: 86.5% from 231 flights
- April 2025: 86.6% from 142 flights
- May 2025: 76.3% from 198 flights
- June 2025: 76.4% from 212 flights
- July 2025: 75.8% from 185 flights
- August 2025: 79.0% from 208 flights
- September 2025: 83.0% from 229 flights
- October 2025: 72.2% from 213 flights
- November 2025: 83.9% from 207 flights
- December 2025: 86.0% from 216 flights
- January 2026: 91.6% from 180 flights
- February 2026: 90.5% from 168 flights
- March 2026: 80.5% from 233 flights
- April 2026: 81.0% from 216 flights
- May 2026: 79.3% from 184 flights
- June 2026: 77.2% from 171 flights
- July 2026: 81.7% from 180 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 82.0% against 83.7% in the 12 months before — declining by 1.7 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 6,988 SAT → IAH flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed