Flight number record
UA 1381
United Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Route
- DCA → IAH
- Departs
- 14:45
- Flights
- 276
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1381, check with United Airlines.
UA 1381 lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 276 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 274 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
9.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 1381 flies
UA 1381 flies DCA to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 14:45, used on 80 of 276 flights, with 14:59 (40 flights) and 14:55 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 14:4580 flights29.0%
- Departs 14:5940 flights14.5%
- Departs 14:5538 flights13.8%
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 14:45 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and UA 1381 runs 7 points better at 79.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
UA 1381 next to DCA to IAH
Every carrier on DCA to IAH combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 3,200 flights, so UA 1381 is 2 points behind it. United flew 2,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, close to this flight's figure.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1381thin sample | 276 | 79.6% | 73 min | 0.36% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on DCA–IAH | 2,413 | 83.8% | 95 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| All carriers on DCA–IAH | 3,200 | 81.4% | 84 min | 1.97% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 1381 quarter by quarter
UA 1381 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 70.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 69 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 202556 flights82.1%
- Oct–Dec 202564 flights82.8%
- Jan–Mar 202675 flights85.1%
- Apr–Jun 202681 flights70.0%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 1381 did best on Tuesday at 86.4% on time and worst on Friday at 72.1%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 1381 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 4,080 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
46% 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 4,080 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 4,080 delay minutes reported on UA 1381.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 9.1% 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 1,208 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 thirteen other city pairs in the data, including ORD to DCA (198), IAH to ABQ (62) and IAH to LAX (53), but none flew often enough under UA 1381 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 276 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 1381
For a booking, read UA 1381 as 79.6% on time with 0.36% cancelled over 276 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 1450 on the same route92.8%
- United Airlines 697 on the same route92.5%
- United Airlines 382 on the same route90.7%
- United Airlines 1785 on the same route66.7%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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.