Carrier route record
UAIAD→BDL
United Airlines · Washington to Hartford
- Flights
- 892
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on IAD to BDL 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 892 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAD to BDL 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 880 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.2%
Every carrier on IAD to BDL, 1,092 flights
These figures cover 892 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
United against every carrier on IAD to BDL
United flew 892 of the 1,092 flights on IAD to BDL, most of the route. Its 86.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.2% to Republic at 85.9%. 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) | 892 | 86.2% | 58 min | 1.23% | A |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 200 | 85.9% | 64 min | 4.50% | A− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IAD to BDL
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 10 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–8am—
- 8am–11am201 flights92.0%
- 11am–2pm163 flights92.5%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm185 flights82.1%
- 8pm–5am343 flights82.2%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 92.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 82.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAD to BDL through the year
July is the worst month at 65.0% on time, 28 points below April, the best at 93.1%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.7%. 9 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 7,051 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 17%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 7,051 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 7,051 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 2,463 of the 7,051 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
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 8.1% 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 87.9% on time across 892 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. 892 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 IAD to BDL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 892 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. 880 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to BDL, every carrier
- United on BDL to IAD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on IAD to BDL85.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.