Flight number record
UA 471
United Airlines · Washington to Atlanta
- Route
- IAD → ATL
- Departs
- 12:35
- Flights
- 324
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 471, check with United Airlines.
UA 471 earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 324 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, UA 471's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 321 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
7.2%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 324 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Schedule
When UA 471 flies
UA 471 flies IAD to ATL without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:35, used on 119 of 324 flights, with 12:52 (86 flights) and 12:40 (68 flights) next.
- Departs 12:35119 flights36.7%
- Departs 12:5286 flights26.5%
- Departs 12:4068 flights21.0%
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 12:35 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.3%, and UA 471 runs 6 points better at 84.7%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
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Against the route
UA 471 next to IAD to ATL
Every carrier on IAD to ATL combined arrived on time 78.0% of the time across 4,003 flights, so UA 471 is 7 points ahead of it. United flew 1,090 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 79.9% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 471thin sample | 324 | 84.7% | 84 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| All United Airlines on IAD–ATL | 1,090 | 79.9% | 78 min | 0.73% | B+ |
| All carriers on IAD–ATL | 4,003 | 78.0% | 86 min | 2.32% | B |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 471 quarter by quarter
UA 471 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.3%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 65 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 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights88.5%
- Jan–Mar 202664 flights82.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights81.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights81.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 471 did best on Saturday at 95.6% on time and worst on Friday at 77.8%. Each day rests on about 46 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 471 runs when it is late
UA 471 often beats the schedule: 128 of 321 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 49 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 5 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 23 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early128 flights39.9%
- Within 15 min144 flights44.9%
- 15–29 min late21 flights6.5%
- 30–59 min late5 flights1.6%
- 1–2 hours late10 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late13 flights4.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 321 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 50 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 471
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 5 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 5 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 October 2025 | 4 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 June 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 June 2026 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 March 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 471 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 4,096 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,096 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 4,096 delay minutes reported on UA 471.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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
7.2% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 534 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.
UA 471 is not only a IAD to ATL flight. It also flew SAT to IAD (323 flights, 95.0% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 324 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.
| Also flown as | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAT to IADthin sample | 323 | 95.0% | 105 min | 0.62% | A+ |
What to do with this
Booking UA 471
For a booking, read UA 471 as 84.7% on time with 0.62% cancelled over 324 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to ATL, every carrier and departure
- ATL to IAD, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 1695 on the same route71.8%
- Frontier Airlines 4707 on the same route69.1%
- United Airlines 2081 on the same route68.5%
- Delta Air Lines 2127 on the same route88.0%
- United Airlines 2739 on the same route89.2%
- Delta Air Lines 1444 on the same route80.3%
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) 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.