PHP List

I'm wanting to redirect users using a PHP script. If I use only a .htaccess redirect, it takes approx 1 sec to go to the new URL. However, if I redirect to the following PHP script first, it takes approx 3 seconds to bring up the new URL. The included page_hit_counter.php script gets called for both, so that's not the bottleneck. Can someone see what the problem might be? Thank you, Jenni <?php $qs = $_SERVER[QUERY_STRING]; $_REQUEST['seo_redirect'] = $qs; include_once('page_hit_counter.php'); $parts = explode('/', $qs); $redirect_url = 'https://www.domain.com/'.$parts[1].'/product/'.$parts[2]; header( 'Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8' ); header( 'Location: '.$redirect_url ); flush(); ob_flush(); exit; ?>