Flight number record
UA 2217
United Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Route
- IAD → IAH
- Departs
- 17:55
- Flights
- 341
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 77.6%, so UA 2217 runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 73 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 340 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
9.1%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 341 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.1% 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 2217 flies
UA 2217 flies IAD to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:55, used on 116 of 341 flights, with 17:45 (73 flights) and 17:59 (41 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:55116 flights34.0%
- Departs 17:4573 flights21.4%
- Departs 17:5941 flights12.0%
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 17:55 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2217 runs 2 points better at 70.3%. 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 2217 next to IAD to IAH
Every carrier on IAD to IAH combined arrived on time 83.7% of the time across 1,869 flights, so UA 2217 is 13 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 9 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2217thin sample | 341 | 70.3% | 65 min | 0.29% | C+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–IAH | 1,869 | 83.7% | 68 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–IAH | 1,869 | 83.7% | 68 min | 0.48% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2217 quarter by quarter
UA 2217 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 83.1% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 63.0%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 85 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 202592 flights63.0%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights70.7%
- Jan–Mar 202666 flights83.1%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights68.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2217 did best on Tuesday at 78.0% on time and worst on Saturday at 62.5%. Each day rests on about 49 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
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 6,520 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,520 delay minutes reported on UA 2217.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, below the national 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.1% 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 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. 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 two other city pairs in the data, including SEA to IAD (172) 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 route89.5%
- United Airlines 1535 on the same route82.2%
- 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.