Route reliability record
BGR→DCA
Bangor to Washington
- Flights
- 1,111
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 590 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.6% 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 1,111 BGR to DCA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly BGR to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 74.2%, against 69.5% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,046 completed flights
Avg delay
105 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.58%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
67.9% on time across 778 flights
These figures cover 1,111 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.4% 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
Which airline is most reliable on BGR to DCA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 93 | 84.6% | 60 min | 2.15% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 69.9% | 83 min | 2.59% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 778 | 67.9% | 115 min | 6.81% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 8 | 28.6% | 60 min | 12.50% | F− |
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 26 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–8am364 flights83.9%
- 8am–11am41 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm327 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm70 flights59.1%
- 5pm–8pm309 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 58.1% on time, against 83.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
January is the weak month at 56.8% on time, against 80.2% in October. 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 115 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 66.2%. 8 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 50% of the 34,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
50% 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 34,000 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 33,550 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 83.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.58%, against 1.81% 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.4% 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 590 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 runs 69.2% on time across 1,110 flights, within half 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 1,111 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 5.58% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 1,046 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BGR to DCA questions
How often is BGR to DCA delayed?
Roughly 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 30.5% of the 1,111 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is BGR to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
69.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BGR to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 83.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 58.1%, 26 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 January delays on BGR to DCA?
January is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 80.2% in October. Across the year that is 23 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 BGR — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on BGR to DCA69.9%
- PSA Airlines on BGR to DCA67.9%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ORD to DCA, a related route69.1%
- ATL to DCA, a related route70.1%
- Republic Airways on-time record84.6%
- American Airlines on-time record69.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record67.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BGR to DCA and DCA to BGR 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.