Route reliability record
IAD→TPA
Washington to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,366
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 811 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,366 IAD to TPA flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly IAD to TPA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.6%, against 81.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,352 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
82.2% on time across 1,180 flights
These figures cover 1,366 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on IAD to TPA
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 | 1,180 | 82.2% | 67 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 186 | 74.9% | 77 min | 3.76% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on IAD to TPA
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 Tampa
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → TPAWashington to Tampa | United Airlines | 81.9% | 82.2% | 0.42% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 683 09:00 |
| 2. BWI → SRQBaltimore to Sarasota | Southwest Airlines | 78.8% | 80.0% | 1.49% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. BWI → TPABaltimore to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 78.1% | 79.3% | 1.55% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 4. DCA → TPAWashington to Tampa | Southwest Airlines | 77.2% | 78.7% | 1.85% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 5. DCA → TPAWashington to Tampa | American Airlines | 70.3% | 72.2% | 2.70% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 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–11am391 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm379 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm70 flights78.5%
- 5pm–8pm406 flights67.0%
- 8pm–5am120 flights82.4%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 67.0% for the evening window. That is 23 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 406 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 61.4% on time, 32 points below April, the best at 92.9%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 170 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.5%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
43% 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 17,000 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 17,418 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 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, 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 actually costs
6.7% 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.
The 811 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 83.7% on time across 1,368 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,366 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.9% on time and July 61.4%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,352 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
IAD to TPA questions
How often is IAD to TPA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.8% of the 1,366 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is IAD to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
81.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on IAD to TPA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.0%, 23 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 TPA?
July is the weakest month at 61.4% on time, compared with 92.9% in April. Across the year that is 32 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
- TPA to IAD — the return legseparate record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- United Airlines on IAD to TPA82.2%
- Frontier Airlines on IAD to TPA74.9%
- IAD to ATL, a related route79.2%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- IAD to DEN, a related route81.7%
- United Airlines on-time record82.2%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.9%
- 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 TPA and TPA 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.