Carrier route record
UAIAD→CLE
United Airlines · Washington to Cleveland
- Flights
- 711
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- 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 CLE earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 711 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAD to CLE record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 705 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.6%
Every carrier on IAD to CLE, 985 flights
These figures cover 711 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on IAD to CLE
United flew 711 of the 985 flights on IAD to CLE, most of the route. Its 84.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.7% to Republic at 84.3%. 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) | 711 | 84.7% | 76 min | 0.56% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 274 | 84.3% | 75 min | 2.19% | B |
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 18 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–11am159 flights92.5%
- 11am–2pm144 flights92.4%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm209 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am199 flights83.4%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.5% of the time, against 74.4% for the evening window. That is 18 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 209 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAD to CLE through the year
July is the worst month at 64.4% on time, 29 points below October, the best at 93.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 100 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.9%. 12 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 8,231 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 5%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 8,231 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 8,231 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 2,992 of the 8,231 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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.
At 287 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.0% on time across 712 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 711 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 CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 711 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 705 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to CLE, every carrier
- United on CLE to IAD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on IAD to CLE84.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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.