Flight number record
UA 2148
United Airlines · Washington to Chicago
- Route
- DCA → ORD
- Departs
- 18:00
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2148, check with United Airlines.
UA 2148 earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 49.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 28 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2148 runs 28 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 279 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
49.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 332 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.02%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
21.1%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 21.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2148 flies
UA 2148 flies DCA to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:00, used on 126 of 348 flights, with 18:10 (86 flights) next.
- Departs 18:00126 flights36.2%
- Departs 18:1086 flights24.7%
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 18:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2148 runs 19 points worse at 49.4%. 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 2148 next to DCA to ORD
Every carrier on DCA to ORD combined arrived on time 73.8% of the time across 7,112 flights, so UA 2148 is 24 points behind it. United flew 3,411 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 29 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2148thin sample | 348 | 49.4% | 92 min | 4.02% | F− |
| All United Airlines on DCA–ORD | 3,411 | 73.8% | 87 min | 2.52% | C |
| All carriers on DCA–ORD | 7,112 | 73.8% | 86 min | 3.56% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2148 quarter by quarter
UA 2148 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 57.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 39.6%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 87 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 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights55.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights57.5%
- Apr–Jun 202681 flights42.3%
- Jul–Sep 202656 flights39.6%
Scale runs 30% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2148 did best on Tuesday at 66.0% on time and worst on Friday at 36.0%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 30 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2148 runs when it is late
The 168 late arrivals split 46 under half an hour, 52 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 70 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early47 flights14.2%
- Within 15 min117 flights35.2%
- 15–29 min late46 flights13.9%
- 30–59 min late52 flights15.7%
- 1–2 hours late34 flights10.2%
- 2+ hours late36 flights10.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 332 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 118 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 6 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 56 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 ORD.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2148
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 July 2026, 16 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The five worst days are spread across July, April, March and June, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 July 2026 | 16 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
| 29 April 2026 | 15 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 12 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 6 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 April 2026 | 6 hours 7 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why UA 2148 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 15,448 delay minutes reported on UA 2148.
Cancellations run at 4.02%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
21.1% 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 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.
The same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including ORD to CVG (78), ORD to SFO (16) and ORD to LAS (15), but none flew often enough under UA 2148 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 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 2148
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on UA 2148: 4.02% of its 348 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 1793 on the same route91.0%
- American Airlines 2903 on the same route74.6%
- American Airlines 1200 on the same route74.0%
- United Airlines 2201 on the same route90.8%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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.