Flight number record
OH 5656
PSA Airlines · Washington to Milwaukee
- Route
- DCA → MKE
- Departs
- 22:25
- Flights
- 347
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s OH 5656, 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 5656 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 347 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so OH 5656 runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 103 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 309 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
10.37%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
13.6%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 347 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When OH 5656 flies
OH 5656 flies DCA to MKE without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 22:25, used on 104 of 347 flights, with 22:10 (72 flights) and 22:00 (38 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 22:25104 flights30.0%
- Departs 22:1072 flights20.7%
- Departs 22:0038 flights11.0%
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 22:25 departure sits in the 8pm–5am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 70.5%, and OH 5656 runs 3 points worse at 67.3%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Against the route
OH 5656 next to DCA to MKE
Every carrier on DCA to MKE combined arrived on time 77.3% of the time across 1,349 flights, so OH 5656 is 10 points behind it. PSA flew 659 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 71.3% on time. Across its whole network PSA Airlines managed 74.6%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OH 5656thin sample | 347 | 67.3% | 82 min | 10.37% | C− |
| All PSA Airlines on DCA–MKE | 659 | 71.3% | 77 min | 7.13% | C− |
| All carriers on DCA–MKE | 1,349 | 77.3% | 72 min | 4.30% | B− |
| PSA Airlines, whole network | 241,957 | 74.6% | 94 min | 4.34% | C− |
Across the year
OH 5656 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter OH 5656 held fairly steady: 71.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 64.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 64.5% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 68.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202588 flights71.6%
- Oct–Dec 202578 flights64.9%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights64.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights68.3%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, OH 5656 did best on Saturday at 78.4% on time and worst on Tuesday at 60.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 18 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Delay causes
Why OH 5656 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 8,229 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
59% 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 8,229 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 8,229 delay minutes reported on OH 5656.
Cancellations run at 10.37%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in ten 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 634 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 same number turns up on three other city pairs in the data, including BTR to DFW (2), DCA to CMH (1) and DCA to TLH (1), but none flew often enough under OH 5656 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to DCA to MKE only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 347 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 5656
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on OH 5656: 10.37% of its 347 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs a little over an hour, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to MKE, every carrier and departure
- MKE to DCA, the return direction
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on-time record
- Every PSA Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.