Route reliability record
BDL→IAD
Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 1,092
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 325 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,092 BDL to IAD flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to IAD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.3%, against 85.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,066 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
87.9% on time across 892 flights
These figures cover 1,092 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to IAD
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 892 | 87.9% | 68 min | 1.57% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 200 | 73.4% | 72 min | 6.00% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on BDL to IAD
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Hartford to Washington
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BDL → IADHartford to Washington | United Airlines | 86.5% | 87.9% | 1.57% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 635 06:00 |
| 2. BDL → BWIHartford to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 81.5% | 82.9% | 1.71% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | Republic Airways | 67.6% | 70.0% | 3.37% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | PSA Airlines | 65.6% | 70.2% | 6.58% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am360 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am286 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm246 flights68.5%
- 5pm–8pm90 flights84.9%
- 8pm–5am110 flights84.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.3% of the time, against 68.5% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,092 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 78.7% on time, against 90.5% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.9%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 11,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 10,835 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 3,691 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.38% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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.
At 325 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 86.2% on time across 1,092 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,092 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in IAD after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,092 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,066 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to IAD questions
How often is BDL to IAD delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.6% of the 1,092 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is BDL to IAD compared with the rest of the country?
85.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to IAD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 68.5%, 26 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on BDL to IAD?
December is the weakest month at 78.7% on time, compared with 90.5% in October. Across the year that is 12 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to BDL — the return legseparate record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on BDL to IAD87.9%
- Republic Airways on BDL to IAD73.4%
- BDL to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ATL to IAD, a related route76.5%
- BDL to ATL, a related route83.4%
- United Airlines on-time record87.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BDL to IAD and IAD to BDL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.