Carrier route record
OHBDL→DCA
PSA Airlines · Hartford to Washington
- Flights
- 958
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on BDL to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.6% 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 958 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on BDL to DCA runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 74 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 894 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on BDL to DCA, 1,736 flights
These figures cover 958 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 BDL to DCA
PSA flew 958 of the 1,736 flights on BDL to DCA, most of the route. Its 70.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 70.2% to Envoy at 55.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 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− |
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 44 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–8am138 flights91.5%
- 8am–11am288 flights78.8%
- 11am–2pm261 flights69.1%
- 2pm–5pm94 flights56.5%
- 5pm–8pm177 flights47.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 91.5% 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 288 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on BDL to DCA through the year
December is the weak month at 56.1% on time, against 81.5% in March. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.1%. 14 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 49% of the 25,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
49% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 24,505 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 91.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.58%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 12.8% 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 71.8% on time across 957 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 958 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 BDL to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.58% 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. 894 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BDL to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to BDL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BDL to DCA70.0%
- American Airlines on BDL to DCA65.2%
- PSA 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.