Flight number record

OH 5261

PSA Airlines · Dayton to Washington

Route: DAY → DCA
Departs: 06:00
Flights: 342
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s OH 5261, check with PSA Airlines. PSA Airlines flies under contract for larger airlines, so a ticket for this flight may show a different airline code and number.

OH 5261 earns an A−. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.8 hours. That rests on 342 flights, with a median arrival 19 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, OH 5261's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights

Avg delay

167 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.22%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

7.0%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 342 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 19 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.

Schedule

When OH 5261 flies

OH 5261 flies DAY to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 06:00, used on 199 of 342 flights. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 06:00199 flights58.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 06:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and OH 5261 runs 3 points worse at 86.2%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

OH 5261 next to DAY to DCA

Every carrier on DAY to DCA combined arrived on time 72.2% of the time across 968 flights, so OH 5261 is 14 points ahead of it. Across its whole network PSA Airlines managed 74.6%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

OH 5261 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
OH 5261thin sample	342	86.2%	167 min	3.22%	A−
All PSA Airlines on DAY–DCA	968	72.2%	115 min	4.24%	C−
All carriers on DAY–DCA	968	72.2%	115 min	4.24%	C−
PSA Airlines, whole network	241,957	74.6%	94 min	4.34%	C−

Across the year

OH 5261 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter OH 5261 held fairly steady: 91.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 83.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 85.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 85.5% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202581 flights91.1%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights83.1%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights85.5%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights85.5%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, OH 5261 ranged from 80.9% on Monday to 89.7% on Saturday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 9 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why OH 5261 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 7,527 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
35%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
3%

35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,527 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,527 delay minutes reported on OH 5261.

Cancellations run at 3.22%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

7.0% 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 about 2.8 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The same number turns up on four other city pairs in the data, including DCA to ECP (12), ECP to DCA (12) and CRW to CLT (10), but none flew often enough under OH 5261 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DAY to DCA only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 342 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking OH 5261

For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on OH 5261: 3.22% of its 342 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs about 2.8 hours, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.

Where to go next

A flight number here means PSA Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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.

Key figures