Route reliability record
IAD→BDL
Washington to Hartford
- Flights
- 1,092
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 325 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,092 IAD to BDL flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAD to BDL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.2%, against 86.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,071 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
86.2% on time across 892 flights
These figures cover 1,092 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on IAD to BDL
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 | 892 | 86.2% | 58 min | 1.23% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 200 | 85.9% | 64 min | 4.50% | A− |
Flight by flight
Flights on IAD to BDL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Hartford
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → BDLWashington to Hartford | United Airlines | 85.1% | 86.2% | 1.23% | 11am–2pm, Tue | UA 444 22:25 |
| 2. BWI → BDLBaltimore to Hartford | Southwest Airlines | 80.4% | 81.8% | 1.77% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. DCA → BDLWashington to Hartford | Republic Airways | 70.6% | 73.1% | 3.37% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 4. DCA → BDLWashington to Hartford | PSA Airlines | 67.5% | 71.8% | 5.96% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,092 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am253 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm246 flights89.2%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm246 flights83.4%
- 8pm–5am347 flights82.4%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 82.4% for the overnight window. That is 9 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 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 72.6% on time, 21 points below January, the best at 93.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.0%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 8,770 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
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 8,770 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 8,770 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 3,126 of the 8,770 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.83% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 325 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 85.4% on time across 1,092 flights, within about a point 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. 1,092 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BDL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,092 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 86.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,071 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAD to BDL questions
How often is IAD to BDL delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.8% of the 1,092 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is IAD to BDL compared with the rest of the country?
86.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IAD to BDL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 82.4%, 9 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on IAD to BDL?
July is the weakest month at 72.6% on time, compared with 93.8% in January. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to IAD — the return legseparate record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- United Airlines on IAD to BDL86.2%
- Republic Airways on IAD to BDL85.9%
- IAD to ATL, a related route79.2%
- ORD to BDL, a related route75.4%
- IAD to DEN, a related route81.7%
- United Airlines on-time record86.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record85.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. IAD to BDL and BDL to IAD are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.