Flight number record
UA 2148
United Airlines · Washington to Chicago
- Route
- DCA → ORD
- Departs
- 18:00
- Flights
- 305
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 51.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 26 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 305 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so UA 2148 runs 26 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 261 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
51.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 297 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.97%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
17.2%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 305 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.2% 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 2148 flies
UA 2148 flies DCA to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:00, used on 128 of 305 flights, with 18:10 (33 flights) and 18:04 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 18:00128 flights42.0%
- Departs 18:1033 flights10.8%
- Departs 18:0431 flights10.2%
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 2148 runs 17 points worse at 51.5%. 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 2148 next to DCA to ORD
Every carrier on DCA to ORD combined arrived on time 74.3% of the time across 6,992 flights, so UA 2148 is 23 points behind it. United flew 3,392 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 73.6% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 28 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2148thin sample | 305 | 51.5% | 83 min | 1.97% | F |
| All United Airlines on DCA–ORD | 3,392 | 73.6% | 89 min | 2.21% | C |
| All carriers on DCA–ORD | 6,992 | 74.3% | 88 min | 3.40% | C− |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | 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 Apr–Jun 2026 at 42.3%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 76 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 flights47.6%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights55.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights57.5%
- Apr–Jun 202681 flights42.3%
Scale runs 35% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2148 did best on Tuesday at 69.8% on time and worst on Friday at 36.4%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 33 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 2148 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 12,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
40% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 11,957 delay minutes reported on UA 2148.
Cancellations sit at 1.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
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. 17.2% 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 four other city pairs in the data, including ORD to SAT (48), ORD to CVG (37) and ORD to SFO (16), 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. 305 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, UA 2148 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 17.2% 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
- DCA to ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 1793 on the same route91.4%
- American Airlines 2903 on the same route77.6%
- American Airlines 1200 on the same route74.4%
- United Airlines 2201 on the same route91.8%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.