Flight number record
UA 1369
United Airlines · Chicago to Washington
- Route
- ORD → DCA
- Departs
- 18:00
- Flights
- 315
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1369, check with United Airlines.
UA 1369 earns an F, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 49.2% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 28 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 315 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 1369 runs 28 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 284 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
49.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 303 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
21.5%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 315 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When UA 1369 flies
UA 1369 is scheduled to leave Chicago (ORD) at 18:00 local time and reach Washington (DCA) at 20:59. That slot held for 307 of the 315 scheduled departures in the data, so the figures below describe one steady operation rather than a number that moved around the clock.
- Departs 18:00307 flights97.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 18:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 1369 runs 19 points worse at 49.2%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
UA 1369 next to ORD to DCA
Every carrier on ORD to DCA combined arrived on time 69.1% of the time across 6,987 flights, so UA 1369 is 20 points behind it. United flew 3,393 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 30 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1369thin sample | 315 | 49.2% | 71 min | 2.86% | F |
| All United Airlines on ORD–DCA | 3,393 | 70.6% | 75 min | 1.80% | C |
| All carriers on ORD–DCA | 6,987 | 69.1% | 82 min | 3.05% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1369 quarter by quarter
UA 1369 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 60.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 44.4%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 79 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202543 flights60.5%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights44.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights47.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights50.0%
Scale runs 35% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1369 did best on Saturday at 69.8% on time and worst on Wednesday at 36.4%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 33 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1369 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 10,872 delay minutes reported on UA 1369.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 21.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 612 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on five other city pairs in the data, including PDX to ORD (52), SFO to MIA (48) and LAS to SFO (48), but none flew often enough under UA 1369 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to ORD to DCA only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 315 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking UA 1369
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 1369: 2.86% of its 315 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DCA, every carrier and departure
- DCA to ORD, the return direction
- American Airlines 2345 on the same route73.3%
- United Airlines 1077 on the same route91.1%
- United Airlines 752 on the same route63.5%
- American Airlines 523 on the same route79.5%
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.