Carrier route record
UATPA→IAD
United Airlines · Tampa to Washington
- Flights
- 1,182
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on TPA to IAD 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 1,182 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's TPA to IAD record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,175 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.7%
Every carrier on TPA to IAD, 1,368 flights
These figures cover 1,182 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 TPA to IAD
United flew 1,182 of the 1,368 flights on TPA to IAD, most of the route. Its 84.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.2% to Frontier at 80.4%. 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) | 1,182 | 84.2% | 76 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 186 | 80.4% | 65 min | 3.76% | B− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on TPA 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 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–8am25 flights—
- 8am–11am392 flights92.0%
- 11am–2pm257 flights88.7%
- 2pm–5pm158 flights77.7%
- 5pm–8pm350 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am—
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 92.0% of the time, against 74.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 392 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on TPA to IAD through the year
July is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 22 points below April, the best at 95.6%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.5%. 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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,122 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 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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
6.7% 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 82.2% on time across 1,180 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 1,182 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 TPA to IAD
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 95.6% on time and July 73.8%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,175 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to IAD, every carrier
- United on IAD to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to IAD80.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) 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.