Carrier route record
UAIAD→TPA
United Airlines · Washington to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,109
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- 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 TPA lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,109 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's IAD to TPA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,104 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.8%
Every carrier on IAD to TPA, 1,287 flights
These figures cover 1,109 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on IAD to TPA
United flew 1,109 of the 1,287 flights on IAD to TPA, most of the route. Its 83.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 84.9% to United at 83.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 178 | 84.9% | 75 min | 2.81% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,109 | 83.6% | 69 min | 0.45% | B+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on IAD to TPA
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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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am370 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm365 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm348 flights72.8%
- 8pm–5am26 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 72.8% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on IAD to TPA through the year
July is the worst month at 76.9% on time, 16 points below April, the best at 93.3%. 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 113 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 77.2%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on IAD to TPA runs when it is late
United on IAD to TPA often beats the schedule: 377 of 1,104 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 181 late arrivals split 63 under half an hour, 51 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 67 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early377 flights34.1%
- Within 15 min546 flights49.5%
- 15–29 min late63 flights5.7%
- 30–59 min late51 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late42 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late25 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,104 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
41 of 156 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 66 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at TPA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on IAD to TPA
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 February 2026, 6 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 February 2026 | 6 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 August 2026 | 6 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 6 hours 27 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 28 June 2026 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
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 13,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 12,501 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 4,435 minutes out of 13,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, below the national 1.89% 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
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The return leg runs 85.6% on time across 1,110 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,109 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on IAD to TPA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 93.3% on time and July 76.9%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,104 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAD to TPA, every carrier
- United on TPA to IAD, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on IAD to TPA84.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Washington Dulles International (IAD) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.