Flight number record

UA 697

United Airlines · Washington to Houston

Route: DCA → IAH
Departs: 08:20
Flights: 342
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 697, check with United Airlines.

UA 697 earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 15 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 342 flights, with a median arrival 22 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 697's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 149 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

92.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.05%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.4%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 342 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 22 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.

Schedule

When UA 697 flies

UA 697 flies DCA to IAH without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 08:20, used on 158 of 342 flights, with 08:15 (107 flights) and 08:30 (53 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 08:20158 flights46.2%
Departs 08:15107 flights31.3%
Departs 08:3053 flights15.5%

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 08:20 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and UA 697 runs 8 points better at 92.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 697 next to DCA to IAH

Every carrier on DCA to IAH combined arrived on time 81.4% of the time across 3,200 flights, so UA 697 is 11 points ahead of it. United flew 2,413 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 14 points.

UA 697 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 697thin sample	342	92.5%	63 min	2.05%	A
All United Airlines on DCA–IAH	2,413	83.8%	95 min	0.91%	B+
All carriers on DCA–IAH	3,200	81.4%	84 min	1.97%	B
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 697 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 697 held fairly steady: 95.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 89.0% in Oct–Dec 2025, 95.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights95.5%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights89.0%
Jan–Mar 202668 flights95.5%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.1%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 697 ranged from 87.5% on Friday to 95.7% on Sunday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 8 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 697 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 73% of the 1,582 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.

National Airspace System
73%
Carrier
16%
Late-arriving aircraft
8%
Extreme weather
2%

73% 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 1,153 minutes out of 1,582, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,582 delay minutes reported on UA 697.

Cancellations sit at 2.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

The 1,208 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 three other city pairs in the data, including IAH to SAT (183), SAT to ORD (95) and SBP to DEN (1), but none flew often enough under UA 697 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to IAH only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 342 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 697

For a booking, read UA 697 as 92.5% on time with 2.05% cancelled over 342 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures