Carrier route record
UABDL→IAD
United Airlines · Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 892
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on BDL to IAD 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 10 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 892 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's BDL to IAD record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 878 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.4%
Every carrier on BDL to IAD, 1,092 flights
These figures cover 892 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
United against every carrier on BDL to IAD
United flew 892 of the 1,092 flights on BDL to IAD, most of the route. Its 87.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.9% to Republic at 73.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 892 | 87.9% | 68 min | 1.57% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 200 | 73.4% | 72 min | 6.00% | C− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on BDL to IAD
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 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–8am353 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am233 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm163 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm33 flights81.8%
- 8pm–5am110 flights84.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 73.8% for the afternoon window. That is 20 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 353 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on BDL to IAD through the year
June is the worst month at 83.1% on time, 14 points below July, the best at 97.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. April was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 81.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 7,229 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
43% 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 7,229 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 7,229 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.57% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 892 flights, within 2 points 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. 892 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 United on BDL to IAD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 892 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 87.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 878 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to BDL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BDL to IAD73.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.