Carrier route record
WNATL→DCA
Southwest Airlines · Atlanta to Washington
- Flights
- 1,139
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ATL to DCA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,139 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 three carriers covered here at 74.7% on time across 1,053 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,113 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.1%
Every carrier on ATL to DCA, 6,812 flights
These figures cover 1,139 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.4% 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
Southwest against every carrier on ATL to DCA
Southwest flew 1,139 of the 6,812 flights on ATL to DCA, about 17% of it. Its 73.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. 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 (this page) | 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
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 50 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am162 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am284 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm163 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm321 flights66.2%
- 5pm–8pm46 flights47.7%
- 8pm–5am163 flights44.1%
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.1% on time, against 94.4% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 321 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ATL to DCA through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 58.0%. January is the strongest month at 89.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 31 points. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.1%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
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 19,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
39% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 19,327 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 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.76% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.53%.
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. 9.4% 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 79.1% on time across 1,139 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,139 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 Southwest on ATL to DCA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 89.2% on time and May 58.0%, a swing of 31 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,113 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ATL to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to ATL, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on ATL to DCA74.7%
- Republic Airways on ATL to DCA73.3%
- Envoy Air on ATL to DCA72.2%
- Delta Air Lines on ATL to DCA67.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.