The sector is held by United Airlines and Volaris.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
IAH Houston to GDL Guadalajara
George Bush Intercontinental, the United States, to Miguel Hidalgo Guadalajara, Mexico. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 5.3 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,322 km
- Block, estimated
- 2h 11m
- Door to door
- 8h 56m
What IAH to GDL looks like
The IAH to GDL sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Houston IAH to Guadalajara GDL is a medium haul sector of 1,322 km by great circle, flown nonstop 5.3 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,322 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 2h 11m.
Houston IAH is a major hub in the network held here, 197 scheduled destinations and 641 departures a day. Guadalajara GDL has 67 destinations and 162.3 departures a day.
Houston carries about 3.9 times the departures of Guadalajara, so a courier who has to be rebooked has far more to work with at one end of this pair than at the other.
Guadalajara runs no time shift at all of Houston in January and one hour behind in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
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 GDL from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| IAH to GDL | 5.29 | 37 | United Airlines, Volaris |
| GDL to IAH | 4.57 | 32 | United Airlines, Volaris |
Two carriers hold the sector, United Airlines and Volaris, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
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 69 departures a week on IAH to GDL, 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 2h 11m block time on IAH to GDL. 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 GDL in the air, estimated | 131 min | 6h 41m |
| Formalities at GDL | 90 min | 8h 11m |
| Delivery run in Guadalajara | 45 min | 8h 56m |
| Door to door | 536 min | 8h 56m |
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 GDL is 8h 56m.
A courier who leaves Houston at 09:00 local is on the ground in Guadalajara at about 11:11 local and at the door by 13:26 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Guadalajara, the last useful departure from Houston is around 13:34 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. 31 of them join IAH to GDL.
| Connecting at | IAH to hub, flights a day | Hub to GDL, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monterrey MTY | 8 | 11.43 | 1,332 | 3h 57m |
| Queretaro QRO | 4.29 | 0.71 | 1,474 | 3h 57m |
| Puerto Vallarta PVR | 1.14 | 3.43 | 1,638 | 4h 08m |
| Puebla PBC | 1.57 | 2.71 | 1,780 | 4h 23m |
| Mexico City MEX | 10.29 | 23 | 1,691 | 4h 30m |
| Dallas DFW | 18.58 | 4.71 | 1,872 | 4h 58m |
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.
31 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Monterrey MTY, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 8 times a day.
Through MTY the routing covers 1,332 km against the 1,322 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 57m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 46m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Queretaro QRO at 3h 57m and Puerto Vallarta PVR at 4h 08m 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 Guadalajara, Leon and Silao BJX is 197 km away by great circle and carries 21 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Plan Houston to Guadalajara 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.
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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 GDL 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 GDL airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- Hand carry into Mexico
- 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 GDL: Los Angeles to Guadalajara, Tijuana to Guadalajara, Guadalajara to Monterrey, Mexico City to Guadalajara, Seattle to Guadalajara, Atlanta to Guadalajara, Chicago to Guadalajara, Mexico City to Guadalajara.