Carrier route record
OHATL→DCA
PSA Airlines · Atlanta to Washington
- Flights
- 1,053
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on ATL to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 1,053 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,139 at 73.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate PSA on ATL to DCA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 970 completed flights
Avg delay
125 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on ATL to DCA, 6,812 flights
These figures cover 1,053 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.3% 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
PSA against every carrier on ATL to DCA
PSA flew 1,053 of the 6,812 flights on ATL to DCA, about 15% of it. Its 74.7% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 74.7% to Delta at 67.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 73.5% 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 (this page) | 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 |
Republic Airways cancels 3.3% 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 PSA runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 40 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am213 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am242 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm228 flights76.6%
- 2pm–5pm97 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm117 flights51.5%
- 8pm–5am156 flights61.6%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 91.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 242 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on ATL to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 66.0% on time, 17 points below April, the best at 83.3%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 78.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.5%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 31,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 30,616 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 91.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 7.69%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twelve 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. 12.3% 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 68.8% on time across 1,055 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,053 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 PSA on ATL to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.69% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 hours; 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. 970 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to ATL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ATL to DCA73.5%
- Republic Airways on ATL to DCA73.3%
- Envoy Air on ATL to DCA72.2%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to DCA67.3%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.