The sector is held by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, National Airlines and United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
LAX Los Angeles to IAH Houston
Los Angeles International, the United States, to George Bush Intercontinental, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 12.6 times a day
- Great circle
- 2,215 km
- Block, estimated
- 3h 20m
- Door to door
- 10h 05m
What LAX to IAH looks like
The LAX to IAH sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Los Angeles LAX to Houston IAH is a medium haul sector of 2,215 km by great circle, flown nonstop 12.6 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 2,215 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 3h 20m.
Los Angeles LAX is a major hub in the network held here, 212 scheduled destinations and 826.3 departures a day. Houston IAH has 197 destinations and 641 departures a day.
Houston is 2 hours ahead of Los Angeles all year.
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 LAX to IAH from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| LAX to IAH | 12.57 | 88 | American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, National Airlines, United Airlines |
| IAH to LAX | 12 | 84 | American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, United Airlines |
5 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 12.6 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 172 departures a week on LAX to IAH, 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 3h 20m block time on LAX to IAH. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to LAX | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At LAX before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| LAX to IAH in the air, estimated | 200 min | 7h 50m |
| Formalities at IAH | 90 min | 9h 20m |
| Delivery run in Houston | 45 min | 10h 05m |
| Door to door | 605 min | 10h 05m |
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 LAX to IAH is 10h 05m.
A courier who leaves Los Angeles at 09:00 local is on the ground in Houston at about 14:20 local and at the door by 16:35 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Houston, the last useful departure from Los Angeles is around 10:25 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. 81 of them join LAX to IAH.
| Connecting at | LAX to hub, flights a day | Hub to IAH, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| El Paso ELP | 4 | 7.29 | 2,220 | 4h 50m |
| Albuquerque ABQ | 7.29 | 2.86 | 2,283 | 4h 55m |
| Phoenix PHX | 23.29 | 7.86 | 2,215 | 5h 11m |
| San Diego SAN | 8.86 | 4.57 | 2,269 | 5h 11m |
| Monterrey MTY | 0.71 | 8.14 | 2,642 | 5h 30m |
| Dallas DFW | 18.57 | 19.57 | 2,345 | 5h 34m |
With 12.6 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.
81 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is El Paso ELP, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 4 times a day.
Through ELP the routing covers 2,220 km against the 2,215 km nonstop track and takes about 4h 50m 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 30m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Albuquerque ABQ at 4h 55m and Phoenix PHX at 5h 11m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves Los Angeles, San Diego SAN is 176 km away by great circle and carries 123 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
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.
Plan Los Angeles to Houston 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 LAX to IAH 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 LAX airport entry
- The IAH airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Dubai to Los Angeles
- The written lane, Los Angeles to Sydney
- The written lane, Los Angeles to Taipei
- The route calculator
More pairs through LAX and IAH: Atlanta to Houston, San Francisco to Houston, Chicago to Houston, Houston to Boston, Seattle to Houston, Frankfurt to Houston, Detroit to Houston, Amsterdam to Houston.