Carrier route record
UADFW→IAD
United Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Washington
- Flights
- 929
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on DFW to IAD lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 929 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's DFW to IAD record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 918 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.4%
Every carrier on DFW to IAD, 1,962 flights
These figures cover 929 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DFW to IAD
United flew 929 of the 1,962 flights on DFW to IAD, about 47% of it. Its 83.6% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.6% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 929 | 83.6% | 80 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 175 | 77.6% | 87 min | 2.86% | B |
| American Airlines | 849 | 70.7% | 74 min | 2.47% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 104 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DFW to IAD
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am281 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm320 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm328 flights77.5%
- 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 90.6% of the time, against 77.5% for the evening window. That is 13 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
July is the worst month at 72.4% on time, 23 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. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.6%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on DFW to IAD runs when it is late
United on DFW to IAD often beats the schedule: 240 of 918 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 151 late arrivals split 56 under half an hour, 34 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early240 flights26.1%
- Within 15 min527 flights57.4%
- 15–29 min late56 flights6.1%
- 30–59 min late34 flights3.7%
- 1–2 hours late38 flights4.1%
- 2+ hours late23 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 918 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
40 of 143 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 48 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAD.
The worst days
Worst days for United on DFW to IAD
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 May 2026, 21 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in May 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 May 2026 | 21 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 October 2025 | 7 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 May 2026 | 6 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 May 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 June 2026 | 4 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 12,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 12,048 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 90.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.0% on time across 928 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 929 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. 929 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 83.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 918 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to DFW, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on DFW to IAD77.6%
- American Airlines on DFW to IAD70.7%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) 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.