Route reliability record
BDL→DCA
Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 1,736
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 313 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.0% 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 1,736 BDL to DCA flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 958 at 70.2% on time.
Best time to fly BDL to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Saturday flights 80.1%, against 69.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,628 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
70.2% on time across 958 flights
These figures cover 1,736 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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 BDL to DCA
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines | 958 | 70.2% | 92 min | 6.58% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 415 | 70.0% | 62 min | 3.37% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 324 | 65.2% | 91 min | 5.86% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 39 | 55.2% | 61 min | 23.08% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 6.6% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Hartford to Washington
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BDL → IADHartford to Washington | United Airlines | 86.5% | 87.9% | 1.57% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 635 06:00 |
| 2. BDL → BWIHartford to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 81.5% | 82.9% | 1.71% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | Republic Airways | 67.6% | 70.0% | 3.37% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 4. BDL → DCAHartford to Washington | PSA Airlines | 65.6% | 70.2% | 6.58% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am333 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am308 flights79.6%
- 11am–2pm362 flights69.7%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights57.0%
- 5pm–8pm570 flights51.6%
- 8pm–5am68 flights66.1%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% on time, against 90.8% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 570 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
December is the weak month at 58.5% on time, against 77.4% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. July was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.5%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 42,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 15%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
54% 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 42,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 42,444 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 90.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 12.7% 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.
At 313 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.2% on time across 1,735 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,736 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.05% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,628 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to DCA questions
How often is BDL to DCA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 31.0% of the 1,736 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to DCA?
PSA Airlines leads at 70.2% on time across 958 flights. Republic Airways is at the other end on 70.0%, a gap of half a point. 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 BDL to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 51.6%, 39 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 December delays on BDL to DCA?
December is the weakest month at 58.5% on time, compared with 77.4% in May. Across the year that is 19 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on BDL to DCA70.2%
- Republic Airways on BDL to DCA70.0%
- American Airlines on BDL to DCA65.2%
- BDL to ORD, a related route74.0%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- BDL to ATL, a related route83.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.0%
- American Airlines on-time record65.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BDL to DCA and DCA to BDL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.