Route reliability record
ATL→DCA
Atlanta to Washington
- Flights
- 6,812
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 547 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 6,812 flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 1,053 at 74.7% on time.
PSA Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 74.7% on time across 1,053 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 6,558 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
74.7% on time across 1,053 flights
These figures cover 6,812 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to DCA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. PSA Airlines arrives on time 74.7% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 67.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,838 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 1,053 | 74.7% | 125 min | 7.69% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,139 | 73.5% | 66 min | 1.76% | C |
| Republic Airways | 462 | 73.3% | 54 min | 3.25% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 259 | 72.2% | 62 min | 3.86% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 61 | 68.3% | 171 min | 1.64% | C |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,838 | 67.3% | 60 min | 2.58% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.7% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am836 flights88.3%
- 8am–11am979 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm1,333 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm1,211 flights61.9%
- 5pm–8pm1,060 flights57.3%
- 8pm–5am1,393 flights60.4%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 88.3% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 1,393 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 80.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. September was the busiest month here, with 592 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.5%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 137,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 49,000 minutes out of 137,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 136,793 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.32%, 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 stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% 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 547 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 6,813 flights, 9 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 6,812 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.32% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 6,558 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ATL to DCA questions
How often is ATL to DCA delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.9% of the 6,812 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ATL to DCA?
PSA Airlines leads at 74.7% on time across 1,053 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 67.3%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ATL to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.3%, 31 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on ATL to DCA?
July is the weakest month at 56.2% on time, compared with 80.0% in September. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ATL — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on-time record74.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record73.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.3%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
Direction matters. ATL to DCA and DCA to ATL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.