Flight profile · United Airlines
UA1997
Washington (IAD) to Newark (EWR) · scheduled 10:30 PM – 11:44 PM
How UA1997 performs
628 operations, June 2024 – July 2026.
UA1997 arrived on time 63.7% of the time, against 73.4% for all IAD → EWR flights, so this departure is 9.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 9.2 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 628 operations, June 2024 – July 2026 · If UA1997 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
What stands out
How UA1997 compares to other flight numbers, not just to itself.
This flight's worst arrivals run unusually far past its typical one, a bigger gap than 91% of 11,788 comparable flight numbers.
A typical arrival is 5 min late, but the worst tenth run 94 minutes worse than that.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.
Where UA1997 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA1997 | 63.7% | 3.98% | 5 min | 16.6% | 628 |
| United Airlines on IAD → EWR | 72.9% | 2.27% | -5 min | 11.7% | 4,182 |
| All IAD → EWR flights | 73.4% | 2.81% | -5 min | 11.6% | 4,626 |
UA1997 has cancelled 3.98% of its scheduled departures (25 of 628), against 2.81% for all IAD → EWR flights — this specific departure cancels 1.2 percentage points more often than the route as a whole. Different flight numbers on the same route can carry different aircraft, crews and schedules, so this is a fact about UA1997 specifically, not about the route it flies.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
Why UA1997 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA1997 on IAD → EWR. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA1997 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA1997 pushed back an average of 70 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 12 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into IAD just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 457 of 603 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA1997 | 28% | 73% | 20% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often UA1997’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often UA1997 left 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves IAD late, does that still matter by the time it reaches EWR?
UA1997 pushes back an average of 28.4 minutes late and reaches the gate at EWR an average of 24.6 minutes late. The 3.9 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 25.2 minutes on the taxiways at IAD, 4.5 minutes longer than a typical IAD departure in the same hour.
On arrival at EWR, UA1997 spends 8.3 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 1.8 minutes shorter than a typical EWR arrival (10.1 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached EWR. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 17,830 departures from IAD scheduled in the clock hour UA1997 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at EWR (387,854 flights), not just UA1997’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026
The hour it leaves IAD
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA1997 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 17,830 departures from IAD are scheduled in the 10 PM–11 PM hour over the period, against 170,208 across the whole day.
UA1997 is scheduled out of IAD at 10:30 PM, in the 10 PM–11 PM bank. Departures from IAD in that hour arrive on time 78.7% of the time against 81.0% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour UA1997 leaves in is an ordinary one for IAD and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from IAD to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · June 2024 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
Other routes UA1997 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| MCO→IAD Orlando to Washington | February 15, 2024 – July 31, 2026 | 564 | 70.2% |
| LAX→SFO Los Angeles to San Francisco | September 25, 2025 – October 25, 2025 | 31 | — |
| SFO→IAD San Francisco to Washington | September 25, 2025 – October 25, 2025 | 31 | — |
| EWR→STL Newark to St. Louis | April 30, 2025 | 1 | — |
| SFO→MCO San Francisco to Orlando | July 1, 2023 – June 26, 2024 | 279 | 86.2% |
| MCO→EWR Orlando to Newark | November 28, 2023 – February 14, 2024 | 79 | — |
| PHX→SFO Phoenix to San Francisco | October 29, 2023 – November 27, 2023 | 30 | — |
| IAD→ORF Washington to Norfolk | September 29, 2023 – October 28, 2023 | 30 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA1997 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
99 min late
against a median of 5 min late
UA1997 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 5 min late, but the worst tenth are 94 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 628 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering June 2024 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 628 records of UA1997 operating IAD → EWR, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
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