Carrier route record
AABDL→DCA
American Airlines · Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 284
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on BDL to DCA draws a D−. 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 284 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 403 at 73.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on BDL to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 131 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 268 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
68.4%
Every carrier on BDL to DCA, 1,681 flights
These figures cover 284 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on BDL to DCA
American flew 284 of the 1,681 flights on BDL to DCA, about 17% of it. Its 64.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 73.6% to Envoy at 50.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 73.6% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 67.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 986 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 403 | 73.6% | 65 min | 2.23% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 986 | 67.5% | 90 min | 8.01% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 284 | 64.2% | 94 min | 5.63% | D− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 8 | 50.0% | 26 min | 12.50% | F− |
PSA Airlines cancels 8.0% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 36 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am73 flights89.6%
- 8am–11am8 flights—
- 11am–2pm33 flights60.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm170 flights53.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 89.6% 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 170 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on BDL to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202582 flights53.8%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights57.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026117 flights71.3%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
- Jul–Sep 202623 flights—
Scale runs 45% 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 64.2% on time across 284 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 Jul–Sep 2025 at 53.8%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 95 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 71.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 55.0%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on BDL to DCA runs when it is late
American on BDL to DCA often beats the schedule: 87 of 268 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 96 late arrivals split 26 under half an hour, 25 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 45 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early87 flights32.5%
- Within 15 min85 flights31.7%
- 15–29 min late26 flights9.7%
- 30–59 min late25 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights7.1%
- 2+ hours late26 flights9.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 268 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 92 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 11 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 15 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for American on BDL to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 March 2026, 18 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 March 2026 | 18 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 April 2026 | 5 hours 51 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 27 October 2025 | 5 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 September 2025 | 4 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 February 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 72% of the 8,976 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 72%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
72% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,976 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 72 to one. The split is drawn from 8,976 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 89.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.63%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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
16.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 60.4% on time across 286 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. 284 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 5.63% 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. 268 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
- Republic Airways on BDL to DCA73.6%
- PSA Airlines on BDL to DCA67.5%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.