Flight number record
UA 2497
United Airlines · Washington to Chicago
- Route
- IAD → ORD
- Departs
- 17:15
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 2497, check with United Airlines.
UA 2497 earns an F+, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 46.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 31 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so UA 2497 runs 31 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 308 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
46.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
17.0%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When UA 2497 flies
UA 2497 flies IAD to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:15, used on 127 of 365 flights, with 17:17 (58 flights) and 17:26 (49 flights) next.
- Departs 17:15127 flights34.8%
- Departs 17:1758 flights15.9%
- Departs 17:2649 flights13.4%
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 17:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and UA 2497 runs 22 points worse at 46.5%. 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 2497 next to IAD to ORD
Every carrier on IAD to ORD combined arrived on time 74.7% of the time across 2,106 flights, so UA 2497 is 28 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight trails by 32 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2497 | 365 | 46.5% | 76 min | 0.82% | F+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–ORD | 2,106 | 74.7% | 79 min | 0.90% | C+ |
| All carriers on IAD–ORD | 2,106 | 74.7% | 79 min | 0.90% | C+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 2497 quarter by quarter
UA 2497 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 73.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 26.7%, a swing of 47 points on roughly 73 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 flights73.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights48.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights54.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights41.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights26.7%
Scale runs 20% to 80%.
By weekday, UA 2497 did best on Saturday at 55.8% on time and worst on Thursday at 39.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 17 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 2497 runs when it is late
The 192 late arrivals split 79 under half an hour, 52 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early8 flights2.2%
- Within 15 min159 flights44.3%
- 15–29 min late79 flights22.0%
- 30–59 min late52 flights14.5%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights7.2%
- 2+ hours late35 flights9.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 106 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 11 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 97 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 2497
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 13 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 13 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 November 2025 | 8 hours 35 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 July 2026 | 8 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 6 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 December 2025 | 5 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 2497 runs late
National Airspace System accounts for 58% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
58% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,529 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,678 delay minutes reported on UA 2497.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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
17.0% 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 588 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 MSY to IAD (198), IAH to MSY (34) and SEA to IAD (23), but none flew often enough under UA 2497 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to IAD to ORD only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 2497
For a booking, UA 2497 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 17.0% 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 ORD, every carrier and departure
- ORD to IAD, the return direction
- United Airlines 2331 on the same route79.8%
- United Airlines 1775 on the same route84.1%
- United Airlines 1738 on the same route78.2%
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) 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
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.