Carrier route record
AABDL→DCA
American Airlines · Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 324
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 19%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on BDL to DCA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 324 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 958 at 70.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on BDL to DCA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 124 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 305 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on BDL to DCA, 1,736 flights
These figures cover 324 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.1% 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
American against every carrier on BDL to DCA
American flew 324 of the 1,736 flights on BDL to DCA, about 19% of it. Its 65.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 70.2% to Envoy at 55.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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.
Departure window
When American 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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am86 flights93.6%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm33 flights60.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm197 flights53.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.2% on time, against 93.6% 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 197 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on BDL to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025145 flights63.5%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights57.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026117 flights71.3%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 65.2% on time across 324 flights.
American on BDL to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 71.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.4%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 108 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, Friday is the strongest day at 70.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 56.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 73% of the 9,672 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.
- 73%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
73% 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 9,672 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 73 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 9,672 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 93.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.86%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.1% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 61.3% on time across 324 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 324 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 American on BDL to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.86% 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. 305 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to BDL, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on BDL to DCA70.2%
- Republic Airways on BDL to DCA70.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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.