Route reliability record
CLE→IAD
Cleveland to Washington
- Flights
- 981
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 287 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 an hour and a half. That rests on 981 CLE to IAD flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to IAD: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.3% of the time and Saturday flights 90.8%, against 87.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 100 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 973 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
88.0% on time across 712 flights
These figures cover 981 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 CLE 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 | 712 | 88.0% | 87 min | 0.28% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 269 | 86.3% | 106 min | 2.23% | A |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland 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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → IADCleveland to Washington | United Airlines | 87.8% | 88.0% | 0.28% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. CLE → BWICleveland to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 84.3% | 85.5% | 1.44% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. CLE → DCACleveland to Washington | PSA Airlines | 60.9% | 66.6% | 8.51% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 17 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–8am276 flights95.3%
- 8am–11am161 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm232 flights83.9%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights86.4%
- 8pm–5am251 flights78.6%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.3% of the time, against 78.6% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 276 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 73.6% on time, 20 points below October, the best at 93.8%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 116 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.7%. 12 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 62% 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% 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 62 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 11,244 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 95.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.81% 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 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 287 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.6% on time across 985 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 981 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. 981 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 87.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 973 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to IAD questions
How often is CLE to IAD delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.4% of the 981 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CLE to IAD compared with the rest of the country?
87.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to IAD?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 78.6%, 17 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 July delays on CLE to IAD?
July is the weakest month at 73.6% on time, compared with 93.8% in October. Across the year that is 20 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CLE to IAD88.0%
- Republic Airways on CLE to IAD86.3%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ATL to IAD, a related route76.5%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- United Airlines on-time record88.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record86.3%
- 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. CLE to IAD and IAD to CLE 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.