Carrier route record

MQATL→DCA

Envoy Air · Atlanta to Washington

Flights: 259
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on ATL to DCA sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 259 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, 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.

On time

72.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

70.1%

Every carrier on ATL to DCA, 6,812 flights

These figures cover 259 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% 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

Envoy against every carrier on ATL to DCA

Envoy flew 259 of the 6,812 flights on ATL to DCA, about 4% of it. Its 72.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 74.7% to Delta at 67.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to DCA
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 Air (this page)thin 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

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm61 flights86.7%
2pm–5pm108 flights70.9%
5pm–8pm90 flights63.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.5% on time, against 86.7% for the 11am–2pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 108 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on ATL to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
Oct–Dec 202577 flights68.0%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights64.4%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights76.6%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.2% on time across 259 flights.

Envoy on ATL to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 64.4%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 86 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 81.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.1%. 28 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 4,281 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
National Airspace System
36%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
3%

44% 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 4,281 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 4,281 reported delay minutes.

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 1,529 minutes out of 4,281, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% 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 82.4% on time across 259 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 259 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 Envoy on ATL to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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