Flight number record
UA 1997
United Airlines · Orlando to Washington
- Route
- MCO → IAD
- Departs
- 19:05
- Flights
- 272
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1997, check with United Airlines.
UA 1997 draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 272 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 1997 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 137 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 269 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
19.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 272 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 1997 flies
UA 1997 flies MCO to IAD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 19:05, used on 87 of 272 flights, with 19:14 (36 flights) and 18:54 (32 flights) next.
- Departs 19:0587 flights32.0%
- Departs 19:1436 flights13.2%
- Departs 18:5432 flights11.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 19:05 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 1997 runs 4 points worse at 63.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
UA 1997 next to MCO to IAD
Every carrier on MCO to IAD combined arrived on time 82.0% of the time across 2,181 flights, so UA 1997 is 18 points behind it. United flew 1,874 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 82.3% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 15 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1997thin sample | 272 | 63.6% | 82 min | 1.10% | D |
| All United Airlines on MCO–IAD | 1,874 | 82.3% | 79 min | 0.96% | B+ |
| All carriers on MCO–IAD | 2,181 | 82.0% | 79 min | 1.15% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1997 quarter by quarter
UA 1997 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 74.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 41.7%, a swing of 33 points on roughly 68 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.
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights74.2%
- Jan–Mar 202653 flights71.2%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights65.9%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights41.7%
Scale runs 35% to 80%.
By weekday, UA 1997 did best on Thursday at 78.4% on time and worst on Sunday at 48.7%. Each day rests on about 39 flights, so a gap of 30 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1997 runs when it is late
When UA 1997 is late it tends to be very late: 51 of its 98 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 21 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early52 flights19.3%
- Within 15 min119 flights44.2%
- 15–29 min late25 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late22 flights8.2%
- 1–2 hours late30 flights11.2%
- 2+ hours late21 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 269 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 88 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 7 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 17 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1997
The latest arrival of the period was on 29 November 2025, 5 hours 38 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 29 November 2025 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 July 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 December 2025 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 July 2026 | 4 hours 3 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 8 November 2025 | 3 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 1997 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 8,035 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,035 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 8,035 delay minutes reported on UA 1997.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
19.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 758 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.
UA 1997 is not only a MCO to IAD flight. It also flew IAD to EWR (265 flights, 77.6% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 272 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IAD to EWRthin sample | 265 | 77.6% | 68 min | 3.77% | B− |
What to do with this
Booking UA 1997
For a booking, UA 1997 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 19.0% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to IAD, every carrier and departure
- IAD to MCO, the return direction
- United Airlines 2065 on the same route83.1%
- United Airlines 413 on the same route74.8%
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.