Flight number record
UA 2497
United Airlines · Washington to Chicago
- Route
- IAD → ORD
- Departs
- 17:15
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 47.9% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 30 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 77.6%, so UA 2497 runs 30 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 297 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
47.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
17.0%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.0% 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 2497 flies
UA 2497 flies IAD to ORD without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:15, used on 106 of 365 flights, with 17:17 (58 flights) and 17:13 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 17:15106 flights29.0%
- Departs 17:1758 flights15.9%
- Departs 17:1349 flights13.4%
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 17:15 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, and UA 2497 runs 20 points worse at 47.9%. 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 2497 next to IAD to ORD
Every carrier on IAD to ORD combined arrived on time 75.2% of the time across 2,054 flights, so UA 2497 is 27 points behind it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight trails by 31 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 2497 | 365 | 47.9% | 78 min | 1.10% | F |
| All United Airlines on IAD–ORD | 2,054 | 75.2% | 73 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–ORD | 2,054 | 75.2% | 73 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 821,041 | 79.0% | 72 min | 1.01% | B |
Across the year
UA 2497 quarter by quarter
UA 2497 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 54.0% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 41.1%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 91 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 flights47.8%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights48.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights54.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights41.1%
Scale runs 35% to 60%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, UA 2497 did best on Saturday at 57.7% on time and worst on Thursday at 39.2%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why UA 2497 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 55%National Airspace System
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
55% 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 7,985 minutes out of 15,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 14,630 delay minutes reported on UA 2497.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
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. 17.0% 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 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. 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 seven other city pairs in the data, including MSY to IAD (151), ORD to DTW (47) and IAH to MSY (34), 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 route80.3%
- United Airlines 1738 on the same route79.4%
- United Airlines 1775 on the same route83.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.