Carrier route record

UADFW→IAD

United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Washington

Flights: 915
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 47%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on DFW to IAD earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 915 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's DFW to IAD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 905 completed flights

Avg delay

93 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.98%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.2%

Every carrier on DFW to IAD, 1,928 flights

These figures cover 915 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on DFW to IAD

United flew 915 of the 1,928 flights on DFW to IAD, about 47% of it. Its 84.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.9% to Republic at 55.6%. Two 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 DFW to IAD
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	161	87.9%	81 min	2.48%	A
United Airlines (this page)	915	84.4%	93 min	0.98%	B+
American Airlines	843	69.7%	72 min	3.68%	C−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	9	55.6%	104 min	0.00%	D+

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on DFW to IAD

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 915 flights.

5am–8am292 flights88.2%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm295 flights85.7%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm328 flights79.9%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.2% of the time, against 79.9% for the evening window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 328 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on DFW to IAD through the year

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

June is the worst month at 74.7% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 95.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.3%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 13,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
Carrier
37%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
8%

40% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 13,064 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,771 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,172 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.8% on time across 914 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 915 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 DFW to IAD

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 915 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 84.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 905 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