Carrier route record
UAFLL→IAD
United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Washington
- Flights
- 700
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 87%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on FLL to IAD earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 700 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to IAD record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 696 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on FLL to IAD, 803 flights
These figures cover 700 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 FLL to IAD
United flew 700 of the 803 flights on FLL to IAD, most of the route. Its 85.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.9% to Frontier at 48.4%. 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) | 700 | 85.9% | 79 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 103 | 48.4% | 103 min | 6.80% | F− |
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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 700 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am194 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm364 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm142 flights80.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 87.6% on time for the 8am–11am window against 80.7% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on FLL to IAD through the year
February is the weak month at 76.9% on time, against 97.9% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on FLL to IAD runs when it is late
United on FLL to IAD often beats the schedule: 240 of 696 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 98 late arrivals split 45 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 28 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early240 flights34.5%
- Within 15 min358 flights51.4%
- 15–29 min late45 flights6.5%
- 30–59 min late25 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late14 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 696 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
16 of 70 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 44 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 FLL to IAD
The latest arrival of the period was on 15 February 2026, 19 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across February, August, March and January, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 15 February 2026 | 19 hours 33 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 2 August 2026 | 13 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 March 2026 | 7 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 41 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 26 January 2026 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 7,694 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 24%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,694 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.6% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, 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 4.0% 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.
The 901 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 runs 83.5% on time across 699 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. 700 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 FLL to IAD
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 700 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 85.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 696 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FLL to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to FLL, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on FLL to IAD48.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International (FLL) delay statistics
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.