Flight profile · United Airlines
UA697
Washington (DCA) to Houston (IAH) · scheduled 8:20 AM – 10:47 AM
How UA697 performs
1,016 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
UA697 arrived on time 90.6% of the time, against 81.9% for all DCA → IAH flights, so this departure is 8.7 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 7.5 points better.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,016 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA697 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where UA697 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA697 | 90.6% | 2.26% | -16 min | 2.8% | 1,016 |
| United Airlines on DCA → IAH | 83.1% | 1.54% | -11 min | 7.0% | 6,895 |
| All DCA → IAH flights | 81.9% | 1.98% | -10 min | 7.4% | 7,839 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why UA697 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA697 on DCA → IAH. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies UA697 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
UA697 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 11 hours on the ground at DCA, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, UA697 pushed back an average of 2 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 1 minute early.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into DCA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 947 of 993 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| UA697 | 31% | 8% | 5% |
| Network, same turn | 29% | 12% | 9% |
A night on the ground absorbs most of a late arrival, so a late inbound matters far less on a turn this long than on a same-day one.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 6 hours or more, usually overnight. How often UA697’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often UA697 left 15 or more minutes late is lower 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 July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves DCA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches IAH?
UA697 pushes back an average of 0.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at IAH an average of 10.3 minutes early. The 10.6 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 17.8 minutes on the taxiways at DCA, 8.4 minutes shorter than a typical DCA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at IAH, UA697 spends 10.0 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 about what any arrival at IAH spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
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 IAH. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 41,923 departures from DCA scheduled in the clock hour UA697 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAH (359,471 flights), not just UA697’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves DCA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. UA697 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 41,923 departures from DCA are scheduled in the 8 AM–9 AM hour over the period, against 435,076 across the whole day.
UA697 is scheduled out of DCA at 8:20 AM, in the 8 AM–9 AM bank. Departures from DCA in that hour arrive on time 83.2% of the time against 76.5% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 6.7 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from DCA 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 · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does UA697 run worse on particular days?
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Monday the least, a gap of 9.2 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes UA697 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| PDX→DEN Portland to Denver | July 5, 2026 | 1 | — |
| IAH→SAT Houston to San Antonio | September 25, 2025 – June 24, 2026 | 183 | 84.2% |
| SAT→ORD San Antonio to Chicago | September 25, 2025 – June 24, 2026 | 95 | 62.8% |
| SBP→DEN San Luis Obispo to Denver | February 4, 2026 | 1 | — |
| TUS→SFO Tucson to San Francisco | February 15, 2025 – March 1, 2025 | 3 | — |
| FLL→IAH Fort Lauderdale to Houston | December 22, 2024 – January 4, 2025 | 14 | — |
| IAH→AUS Houston to Austin | July 3, 2023 – December 18, 2024 | 33 | — |
| IAH→SFO Houston to San Francisco | September 29, 2023 – October 28, 2023 | 30 | — |
| IAH→ORF Houston to Norfolk | September 5–28, 2023 | 24 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA697 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.
13 min late
against a median of 16 min early
Percentiles over 1,016 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,016 records of UA697 operating DCA → IAH, 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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