Flight number record
UA 2217
United Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Route
- IAD → IAH
- Departs
- 17:59
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2217, check with United Airlines.
UA 2217 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 341 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2217 runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 339 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 341 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2217 flies
UA 2217 flies IAD to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:59, used on 82 of 341 flights, with 17:55 (76 flights) and 17:45 (73 flights) next.
- Departs 17:5982 flights24.0%
- Departs 17:5576 flights22.3%
- Departs 17:4573 flights21.4%
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 17:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2217 runs 4 points better at 71.7%. 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 2217 next to IAD to IAH
Every carrier on IAD to IAH combined arrived on time 84.7% of the time across 1,862 flights, so UA 2217 is 13 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2217thin sample | 341 | 71.7% | 65 min | 0.59% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–IAH | 1,862 | 84.7% | 71 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–IAH | 1,862 | 84.7% | 71 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2217 quarter by quarter
UA 2217 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.7%, a swing of 23 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.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights70.7%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights68.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights60.7%
Scale runs 50% to 90%.
By weekday, UA 2217 did best on Tuesday at 79.6% on time and worst on Saturday at 60.4%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2217 runs when it is late
The 96 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early84 flights24.8%
- Within 15 min159 flights46.9%
- 15–29 min late36 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.7%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 339 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
24 of 84 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. In the other direction, 36 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 IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 2217
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 July 2026, 8 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 July 2026 | 8 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 5 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 November 2025 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 August 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 September 2025 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2217 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 6,206 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,206 delay minutes reported on UA 2217.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
8.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,190 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 two other city pairs in the data, including SEA to IAD (159) and PIT to IAH (21), but none flew often enough under UA 2217 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to IAH only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 341 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 2217
For a booking, UA 2217 is one of the weaker ways to fly IAD to IAH: 13 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to IAH, every carrier and departure
- IAH to IAD, the return direction
- United Airlines 1524 on the same route89.8%
- United Airlines 1535 on the same route85.1%
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.