IAD Washington DC

How deep the IAD board really is

The table above says where a courier can fly from IAD. This reads the same 270 destinations back for the questions a dispatcher asks second: how much of the board rests on one airline, how much of it runs less than daily, whether the return leg is as thick as the outbound, what the clock here does to a Gulf working day and which of the destinations shut at night, all of it computed on 2026-09-07 from AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics.

• 150of the 270 destinations are flown by one airline
• 146destinations run less than once a day
• 47destinations have four or more departures a day
• 45.6%of the destinations name United Airlines, the largest presence here

Who holds the departures at IAD

115 airlines appear on the IAD board and they do not hold it evenly. United Airlines is on 123 of the 270 destinations, 45.6 per cent of them, and on 45 of those it is the only airline flying the sector. The destinations it appears on carry 401.1 of the 481.8 departures a day this airport files, though other airlines fly some of the same sectors, so read that as reach rather than as a share of the aircraft.

The next largest presence is NetJets Aviation on 82 destinations. 65 of the 115 airlines at IAD appear on a single destination each, which is the long tail every airport carries, and none of it is a rebooking option when the sector you need is the one that fell over.

An airport held this tightly is quick to book and slow to recover: with 123 of the 270 destinations on one airline, the second aircraft on an IAD sector is usually another United Airlines aircraft, and when there is not one the desk is looking at another airport rather than another airline. That is why the alternate airports listed above matter more at IAD than the destination count does.

How much of the IAD board is daily

Of the 270 destinations, 124 are flown at least once a day and 146 are not, 71 of them running once a week or less. The median destination on the IAD board is flown 5 times a week.

An average of 0.14 flights a day is the schedule statistic, and it is worth translating it before anything is promised to anybody: IAD to Winston-Salem (INT) is about one a week, so a missed departure there is not a delay of hours, it is the next slot.

The five busiest destinations carry 50.3 of the 481.8 departures a day, 10.4 per cent of the whole board. With 54.1 per cent of the 270 destinations running less than daily, this is a board that rewards booking the outbound before the collection is confirmed rather than after.

Destination	Country	The only airline on it	Flights a week	km	Routing
Abingdon VJI	the United States	Flexjet	1	474	plan this
Allentown ABE	the United States	GJE	1	256	plan this
Amarillo AMA	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	2,184	plan this
Athens AHN	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	764	plan this
Atlanta FTY	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	854	plan this
Bangor BGR	the United States	NetJets Aviation	1	966	plan this
Battle Creek BTL	the United States	Jet Aviation	1	756	plan this
Blacksburg BCB	the United States	Flexjet	1	323	plan this
Block Island BID	the United States	PlaneSense	1	558	plan this
Columbus OSU	the United States	Contour Aviation	1	498	plan this

The ten destinations out of IAD where one airline holds the sector and files fewer than seven departures a week, with the weekly figure taken as the average daily rate multiplied by seven rather than as a fixed timetable. 102 further destinations sit in the same position and are listed in the board above.

The way back from IAD

The desk holds the return direction for 100 of the 270 destinations, and a courier plans the way back on those figures rather than on the outbound. On 16 of them the return into IAD runs thinner than the outbound by more than a quarter. The widest gaps are Chicago (ORD) at 8.1 out a day against 0.29 back, New York (JFK) at 2.6 out a day against 0.14 back and Guatemala City (GUA) at 2 out a day against 0.57 back.

It runs the other way as well: Nice (NCE) files 1.1 a day back into IAD against 0.71 outbound, which is the shape that strands a courier at this end rather than at the far end.

The clock at IAD

IAD keeps America/New_York time, eight hours behind Dubai in summer and nine hours behind in winter, because the clock here moves and the Gulf clock does not.

When it is 09:00 on a Dubai working morning it is 01:00 at IAD, so a nine to six day at each end overlaps for an hour. That is a narrow window for a signature, a customs query or an authority to release, and it is the reason a consignment for IAD is briefed the day before rather than on the morning it flies.

The night at IAD

9 of the destinations from here carry a documented night restriction of their own, which is a departure time question at this end rather than an arrival problem at the other.

Into London (LHR) the door shuts at 23:30 local, so the last departure from IAD that lands inside it leaves around 10:53, on a modelled block of 7h 37m. Into Frankfurt-am-Main (FRA) the door shuts at 23:00 local, so the last departure from IAD that lands inside it leaves around 08:37, on a modelled block of 8h 23m. Into Paris (CDG) the door shuts at 00:00 local, so the last departure from IAD that lands inside it leaves around 10:02, on a modelled block of 7h 58m. Those three departure times out of IAD are worked backwards from the published window with the block time model this site uses everywhere, 720 to 880 km an hour by sector length with thirty minutes on the ground, so they are arithmetic rather than a timetable and the desk checks the published departure before it promises the landing.

Where IAD turns up on the rest of this site

IAD carries two other pages on this site as well: the United States country desk, which sets out the customs practice, the working week and the road legs behind this airport and the IAD transit page for the connecting case, where a courier changes aircraft here rather than starting or finishing.

The site publishes 31 airport pair pages that start or end at IAD, each with the distance, the block time, the carriers on the sector and a door to door clock. The busiest are Washington DC to Charlotte (CLT), Washington DC to Denver (DEN) and Washington DC to Detroit (DTW).

Four courier postings name IAD as the airport a courier here flies from: Centreville, Dale City and Harrisonburg.

To price a movement rather than read the board, the route calculator opens with IAD already set as the origin, and it works out the flying time, the distance and the delivery hour for any of the 270 destinations above.