Carrier route record

UACLE→IAD

United Airlines · Cleveland to Washington

Flights: 712
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 73%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 712 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's CLE to IAD record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 710 completed flights

Avg delay

87 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.28%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.6%

Every carrier on CLE to IAD, 981 flights

These figures cover 712 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 CLE to IAD

United flew 712 of the 981 flights on CLE to IAD, most of the route. Its 88.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.0% to Republic at 86.3%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CLE to IAD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	712	88.0%	87 min	0.28%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	269	86.3%	106 min	2.23%	A

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 16 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–8am199 flights95.0%
8am–11am161 flights93.8%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm144 flights85.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am208 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 95.0% of the time, against 78.6% for the overnight window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 208 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on CLE to IAD through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, December worst

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. October was the busiest month here, with 101 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.6%. 12 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 67% of the 7,432 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
67%
Carrier
21%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
1%

67% 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 7,432 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 7,432 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 95.0% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 84.7% on time across 711 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. 712 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. 712 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 88.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 710 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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