Carrier route record
UACLE→IAD
United Airlines · Cleveland to Washington
- Flights
- 796
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CLE 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 796 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CLE to IAD record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 792 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
87.1%
Every carrier on CLE to IAD, 1,072 flights
These figures cover 796 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on CLE to IAD
United flew 796 of the 1,072 flights on CLE to IAD, most of the route. Its 87.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.6% to Republic at 85.4%. 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) | 796 | 87.6% | 101 min | 0.38% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 276 | 85.4% | 103 min | 3.26% | A− |
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am212 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am205 flights92.7%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm193 flights80.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am186 flights78.9%
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 96.7% of the time, against 78.9% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 212 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on CLE to IAD through the year
December is the weak month at 74.2% on time, against 94.2% in June. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 106 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on CLE to IAD runs when it is late
The 98 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early189 flights23.9%
- Within 15 min505 flights63.8%
- 15–29 min late41 flights5.2%
- 30–59 min late20 flights2.5%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights1.6%
- 2+ hours late24 flights3.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 792 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 91 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 23 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on CLE to IAD
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 July 2026, 16 hours 53 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 July 2026 | 16 hours 53 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 July 2026 | 10 hours 41 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 December 2025 | 10 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 10 hours 17 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 3 February 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 9,867 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,867 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 9,867 reported delay minutes.
37% 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 3,618 minutes out of 9,867, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 runs 85.2% on time across 796 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. 796 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 CLE to IAD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 796 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. 792 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to CLE, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CLE to IAD85.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.