The sector is held by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SEA Seattle to IAH Houston
Seattle Tacoma International, the United States, to George Bush Intercontinental, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 6.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 3,013 km
- Block, estimated
- 4h 08m
- Door to door
- 10h 53m
What SEA to IAH looks like
The SEA to IAH sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Seattle SEA to Houston IAH is a medium haul sector of 3,013 km by great circle, flown nonstop 6.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 3,013 km, 880 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 4h 08m.
Seattle SEA is a large airport in the network held here, 145 scheduled destinations and 717.9 departures a day. Houston IAH has 197 destinations and 641 departures a day.
Houston is 2 hours ahead of Seattle 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 SEA to IAH from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA to IAH | 6.86 | 48 | Alaska Airlines, United Airlines |
| IAH to SEA | 7 | 49 | Alaska Airlines, United Airlines |
Two carriers hold the sector, Alaska Airlines and United Airlines, which gives a missed departure somewhere to go without leaving the nonstop.
At 6.9 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 97 departures a week on SEA 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 4h 08m block time on SEA 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 SEA | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SEA before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SEA to IAH in the air, estimated | 248 min | 8h 38m |
| Formalities at IAH | 90 min | 10h 08m |
| Delivery run in Houston | 45 min | 10h 53m |
| Door to door | 653 min | 10h 53m |
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 SEA to IAH is 10h 53m.
A courier who leaves Seattle at 09:00 local is on the ground in Houston at about 15:08 local and at the door by 17:23 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Houston, the last useful departure from Seattle is around 09:37 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. 64 of them join SEA to IAH.
| Connecting at | SEA to hub, flights a day | Hub to IAH, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albuquerque ABQ | 2.43 | 2.86 | 3,093 | 5h 57m |
| Salt Lake City SLC | 12.86 | 6.29 | 3,029 | 6h 07m |
| El Paso ELP | 1.14 | 7.29 | 3,273 | 6h 11m |
| Portland PDX | 23 | 2.86 | 3,142 | 6h 18m |
| Denver DEN | 23.57 | 15.57 | 3,033 | 6h 22m |
| Kansas City MCI | 3.71 | 3.86 | 3,429 | 6h 22m |
With 6.9 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.
64 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Albuquerque ABQ, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about twice a day.
Through ABQ the routing covers 3,093 km against the 3,013 km nonstop track and takes about 5h 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 49m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, Salt Lake City SLC at 6h 07m and El Paso ELP at 6h 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 Seattle, Victoria YYJ is 157 km away by great circle and carries 22 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.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through SEA or IAH. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Boeing, Everett and RentonWidebody and 737 final assembly. A European supplier base and an American line, eight time zones apart. Logistics through Seattle SEA.
Plan Seattle 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 SEA 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 SEA airport entry
- The IAH airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Dubai to Seattle
- The written lane, Seattle to Nagoya
- The written lane, Doha to Houston
- The route calculator
More pairs through SEA and IAH: Atlanta to Houston, San Francisco to Houston, Chicago to Houston, Houston to Boston, Frankfurt to Houston, Detroit to Houston, Amsterdam to Houston, Los Angeles to Houston.