Carrier route record
UAMCO→IAD
United Airlines · Orlando to Washington
- Flights
- 1,898
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 87%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on MCO to IAD lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,898 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's MCO to IAD record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,883 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on MCO to IAD, 2,178 flights
These figures cover 1,898 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
United against every carrier on MCO to IAD
United flew 1,898 of the 2,178 flights on MCO to IAD, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 82.9% to Frontier at 81.6%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,898 | 82.9% | 82 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 280 | 81.6% | 69 min | 2.86% | B |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on MCO to IAD
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 24 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–11am604 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm515 flights86.4%
- 2pm–5pm420 flights74.7%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights69.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 69.7% for the evening window. That is 24 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 604 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on MCO to IAD through the year
July is the worst month at 72.4% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 92.6%. 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 175 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 26,000 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 23%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
45% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 26,475 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 93.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, 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
7.1% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 758 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 83.0% on time across 1,897 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,898 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 MCO to IAD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.6% on time and July 72.4%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,883 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCO to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to MCO, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on MCO to IAD81.6%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Orlando International (MCO) delay statistics
- 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.