The sector is held by Mesa Airlines, NetJets Aviation, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
IAH Houston to BHM Birmingham
George Bush Intercontinental, the United States, to Birmingham -Shuttlesworth, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 5.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 904 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 39m
- Door to door
- 8h 24m
What IAH to BHM looks like
The IAH to BHM sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Houston IAH to Birmingham BHM is a short sector of 904 km by great circle, flown nonstop 5.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 904 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 39m.
Houston IAH is a major hub in the network held here, 197 scheduled destinations and 641 departures a day. Birmingham BHM has 84 destinations and 85.8 departures a day.
Houston carries about 7.5 times the departures of Birmingham, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Houston and Birmingham keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on IAH to BHM from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| IAH to BHM | 5.29 | 37 | Mesa Airlines, NetJets Aviation, United Airlines |
| BHM to IAH | 5.14 | 36 | Delta Air Lines, Mesa Airlines, United Airlines |
4 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 5.3 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 73 departures a week on IAH to BHM, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 39m block time on IAH to BHM. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to IAH | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At IAH before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| IAH to BHM in the air, estimated | 99 min | 6h 09m |
| Formalities at BHM | 90 min | 7h 39m |
| Delivery run in Birmingham | 45 min | 8h 24m |
| Door to door | 504 min | 8h 24m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for IAH to BHM is 8h 24m.
A courier who leaves Houston at 09:00 local is on the ground in Birmingham at about 10:39 local and at the door by 12:54 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Birmingham, the last useful departure from Houston is around 14:06 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 28 of them join IAH to BHM.
| Connecting at | IAH to hub, flights a day | Hub to BHM, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Atlanta ATL | 15 | 9.57 | 1,324 | 4h 14m |
| Dallas DFW | 18.58 | 6.86 | 1,321 | 4h 15m |
| Nashville BNA | 5.29 | 2.57 | 1,342 | 4h 16m |
| Tampa TPA | 3.14 | 1.57 | 2,005 | 4h 57m |
| Orlando MCO | 8.43 | 2 | 2,143 | 5h 08m |
| Charlotte CLT | 8.86 | 6.71 | 2,031 | 5h 12m |
With 5.3 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
28 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Atlanta ATL, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 9.6 times a day.
Through ATL the routing covers 1,324 km against the 904 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 14m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 90 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is 2h 35m more than the nonstop, which is the price of a missed departure on this pair.
Behind it, Dallas DFW at 4h 15m and Nashville BNA at 4h 16m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Houston, Houston HOU is 38 km away by great circle and carries 145 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Birmingham, Atlanta ATL is 216 km away by great circle and carries 253 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through IAH or BHM. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Mercedes-Benz, Tuscaloosa, AlabamaSUV assembly for world markets. The same transatlantic pattern as BMW Spartanburg. Logistics through Birmingham BHM.
Plan Houston to Birmingham yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
min
min
min
min
Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for IAH to BHM in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The IAH airport entry
- The BHM airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Doha to Houston
- The written lane, Dubai to Houston
- The written lane, Houston to Aberdeen
- The route calculator
More pairs through IAH and BHM: Atlanta to Birmingham, Chicago to Birmingham, Birmingham to Detroit, Birmingham to Charlotte, Birmingham to Miami, Birmingham to Dallas, Birmingham to Denver, El Paso to Birmingham.