Carrier route record
UAIAD→BDL
United Airlines · Washington to Hartford
- Flights
- 941
- 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 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 941 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAD to BDL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 85 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 928 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.9%
Every carrier on IAD to BDL, 1,082 flights
These figures cover 941 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 IAD to BDL
United flew 941 of the 1,082 flights on IAD to BDL, most of the route. Its 85.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 86.6% to United at 85.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 141 | 86.6% | 75 min | 4.96% | A− |
| United Airlines (this page) | 941 | 85.8% | 63 min | 1.17% | A |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IAD to BDL
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 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am197 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm225 flights91.3%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm174 flights82.1%
- 8pm–5am345 flights80.9%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 80.9% for the overnight window. That is 10 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 345 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAD to BDL through the year
July is the worst month at 73.7% on time, 19 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 90.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on IAD to BDL runs when it is late
United on IAD to BDL often beats the schedule: 241 of 928 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 132 late arrivals split 55 under half an hour, 39 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 38 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early241 flights26.0%
- Within 15 min555 flights59.8%
- 15–29 min late55 flights5.9%
- 30–59 min late39 flights4.2%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights2.4%
- 2+ hours late16 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 928 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 114 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 17% of them. 37 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on IAD to BDL
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 10 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 July 2026 | 10 hours 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 May 2026 | 6 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 November 2025 | 3 hours 46 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
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 8,245 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,245 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,245 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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.
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 85.3% on time across 941 flights, within half 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. 941 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. 941 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 928 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 BDL86.6%
- 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 7.05 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.