Flight number record
UA 2081
United Airlines · Washington to Atlanta
- Route
- IAD → ATL
- Departs
- 17:17
- Flights
- 318
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2081, check with United Airlines.
UA 2081 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 318 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2081 runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 314 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
15.9%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 318 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2081 flies
UA 2081 flies IAD to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:17, used on 69 of 318 flights, with 17:45 (60 flights) and 17:55 (46 flights) next.
- Departs 17:1769 flights21.7%
- Departs 17:4560 flights18.9%
- Departs 17:5546 flights14.5%
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 17:17 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2081 runs level with that at 68.5%. 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 2081 next to IAD to ATL
Every carrier on IAD to ATL combined arrived on time 78.0% of the time across 4,003 flights, so UA 2081 is 10 points behind it. United flew 1,090 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2081thin sample | 318 | 68.5% | 82 min | 0.63% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–ATL | 1,090 | 79.9% | 78 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–ATL | 4,003 | 78.0% | 86 min | 2.32% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2081 quarter by quarter
UA 2081 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 50.9%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 80 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 202529 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202572 flights70.8%
- Jan–Mar 202677 flights78.9%
- Apr–Jun 202684 flights63.1%
- Jul–Sep 202656 flights50.9%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2081 did best on Tuesday at 83.7% on time and worst on Monday at 59.2%. Each day rests on about 45 flights, so a gap of 25 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2081 runs when it is late
When UA 2081 is late it tends to be very late: 50 of its 99 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 23 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early42 flights13.4%
- Within 15 min173 flights55.1%
- 15–29 min late23 flights7.3%
- 30–59 min late26 flights8.3%
- 1–2 hours late27 flights8.6%
- 2+ hours late23 flights7.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 314 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 88 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 24 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 ATL.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2081
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 November 2025, 5 hours behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 November 2025 | 5 hours | National Airspace System |
| 20 May 2026 | 4 hours 33 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 June 2026 | 4 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 December 2025 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 September 2025 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2081 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 8,158 reported delay minutes.
- 40%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,158 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 8,158 delay minutes reported on UA 2081.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, below the national 1.89% 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
15.9% 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 534 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.
The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including LAX to IAD (73), PIT to IAD (25) and EWR to BZN (19), but none flew often enough under UA 2081 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to ATL only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 318 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 2081
For a booking, UA 2081 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 15.9% 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
- IAD to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to IAD, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1695 on the same route71.8%
- Frontier Airlines 4707 on the same route69.1%
- United Airlines 471 on the same route84.7%
- Delta Air Lines 2127 on the same route88.0%
- United Airlines 2739 on the same route89.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1444 on the same route80.3%
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.