Carrier route record
UAORD→DCA
United Airlines · Chicago to Washington
- Flights
- 3,411
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on ORD to DCA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 3,411 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,150 at 69.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so United on ORD to DCA runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 72 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,319 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.14%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on ORD to DCA, 7,104 flights
These figures cover 3,411 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on ORD to DCA
United flew 3,411 of the 7,104 flights on ORD to DCA, about 48% of it. Its 70.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.5% to SkyWest at 57.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 171 | 83.5% | 47 min | 2.34% | B |
| United Airlines (this page) | 3,411 | 70.1% | 74 min | 2.14% | C |
| Republic Airways | 1,150 | 69.8% | 73 min | 4.43% | C− |
| American Airlines | 2,268 | 66.3% | 91 min | 3.62% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 57.1% | 106 min | 5.77% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.4% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on ORD to DCA
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 38 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am671 flights88.8%
- 8am–11am786 flights83.4%
- 11am–2pm667 flights64.6%
- 2pm–5pm598 flights59.8%
- 5pm–8pm687 flights50.5%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.5% on time, against 88.8% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 786 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on ORD to DCA through the year
August is the worst month at 62.4% on time, 14 points below October, the best at 76.5%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 363 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.1%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on ORD to DCA runs when it is late
The 992 late arrivals split 287 under half an hour, 289 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 416 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early761 flights22.9%
- Within 15 min1,566 flights47.2%
- 15–29 min late287 flights8.6%
- 30–59 min late289 flights8.7%
- 1–2 hours late244 flights7.4%
- 2+ hours late172 flights5.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 3,319 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
116 of 814 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 294 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 DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for United on ORD to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 December 2025, 12 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 December 2025 | 12 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 28 January 2026 | 11 hours 23 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 27 July 2026 | 9 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 March 2026 | 9 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 July 2026 | 7 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 73,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 73,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 73,074 reported delay minutes.
38% 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 28,000 minutes out of 73,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 2.14% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.56%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
12.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 612 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 3,411 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,411 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 ORD to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 76.5% on time and August 62.4%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 3,319 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DCA, every carrier
- United on DCA to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to DCA83.5%
- Republic Airways on ORD to DCA69.8%
- American Airlines on ORD to DCA66.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DCA57.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.