The sector is held by JetBlue Airways, Qatar Airways and Spirit Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
JFK New York to IAH Houston
John F Kennedy International, the United States, to George Bush Intercontinental, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- About twice a day
- Great circle
- 2,278 km
- Block, estimated
- 3h 25m
- Door to door
- 10h 10m
What JFK to IAH looks like
The JFK to IAH sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
New York JFK to Houston IAH is a medium haul sector of 2,278 km by great circle, flown nonstop about twice a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 2,278 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 3h 25m.
New York JFK is a major hub in the network held here, 227 scheduled destinations and 730.2 departures a day. Houston IAH has 197 destinations and 641 departures a day.
Houston is one hour behind of New York 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 JFK to IAH from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| JFK to IAH | 2.71 | 19 | JetBlue Airways, Qatar Airways |
| IAH to JFK | 2.3 | 16.1 | JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines |
3 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
Between them the two directions put about 35.1 departures a week on JFK 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 25m block time on JFK 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 JFK | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At JFK before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| JFK to IAH in the air, estimated | 205 min | 7h 55m |
| Formalities at IAH | 90 min | 9h 25m |
| Delivery run in Houston | 45 min | 10h 10m |
| Door to door | 610 min | 10h 10m |
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 JFK to IAH is 10h 10m.
A courier who leaves New York at 09:00 local is on the ground in Houston at about 11:25 local and at the door by 13:40 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Houston, the last useful departure from New York is around 13:20 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. 76 of them join JFK to IAH.
| Connecting at | JFK to hub, flights a day | Hub to IAH, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| New Orleans MSY | 3.29 | 9 | 2,391 | 5h 09m |
| New York LGA | 0.6 | 12.29 | 2,294 | 5h 11m |
| Philadelphia PHL | 0.57 | 6 | 2,280 | 5h 11m |
| Baltimore BWI | 0.57 | 4.29 | 2,281 | 5h 13m |
| Washington DC DCA | 7.43 | 10.29 | 2,284 | 5h 14m |
| Indianapolis IND | 5.29 | 4.71 | 2,427 | 5h 21m |
One nonstop a day means one chance a day, so the connections below are what a consignment that arrives at JFK in the afternoon actually flies on.
76 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is New Orleans MSY, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 3.3 times a day.
Through MSY the routing covers 2,391 km against the 2,278 km nonstop track and takes about 5h 09m 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 44m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, New York LGA at 5h 11m and Philadelphia PHL 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 New York, New York LGA is 17 km away by great circle and carries 109 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 New York 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 JFK 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 JFK airport entry
- The IAH airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Abu Dhabi to New York
- The written lane, Doha to New York
- The written lane, Dubai to New York
- The route calculator
More pairs through JFK 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.