Carrier route record

OHBNA→DCA

PSA Airlines · Nashville to Washington

Flights: 399
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on BNA to DCA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 399 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,845 at 74.1% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on BNA to DCA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 100 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 367 completed flights

Avg delay

121 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.52%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

71.3%

Every carrier on BNA to DCA, 4,387 flights

These figures cover 399 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

PSA against every carrier on BNA to DCA

PSA flew 399 of the 4,387 flights on BNA to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 67.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 74.1% to PSA at 67.3%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BNA to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	1,845	74.1%	65 min	3.09%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	291	72.9%	80 min	4.81%	C−
Envoy Airthin sample	144	71.1%	58 min	6.25%	C−
Southwest Airlines	1,708	68.9%	52 min	1.52%	C
PSA Airlines (this page)	399	67.3%	121 min	7.52%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 3.1% 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 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 24 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am86 flights84.8%
8am–11am50 flights73.3%
11am–2pm42 flights60.5%
2pm–5pm172 flights63.0%
5pm–8pm20 flights—
8pm–5am29 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 60.5% on time against 84.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 172 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on BNA to DCA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 45.7% on time, against 77.8% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 72 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 50.9%, a spread of 34 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late PSA on BNA to DCA runs when it is late

PSA on BNA to DCA often beats the schedule: 102 of 367 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When PSA on BNA to DCA is late it tends to be very late: 61 of its 120 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 28 were two hours or more.

15+ min early102 flights27.8%
Within 15 min145 flights39.5%
15–29 min late28 flights7.6%
30–59 min late31 flights8.4%
1–2 hours late33 flights9.0%
2+ hours late28 flights7.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 367 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

23 of 125 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 18 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for PSA on BNA to DCA

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 March 2026, 24 hours 31 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.

The latest arrivals of PSA on BNA to DCA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 March 2026	24 hours 31 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
12 June 2026	21 hours 41 minutes	National Airspace System
16 August 2026	16 hours 47 minutes	Extreme weather
2 March 2026	13 hours 23 minutes	National Airspace System
14 July 2026	6 hours 39 minutes	National Airspace System

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
National Airspace System
30%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
7%

53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 14,501 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 84.8% on time here.

Cancellations run at 7.52%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twelve 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

16.6% 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.

The 562 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.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 60.1% on time across 399 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 399 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 BNA to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.52% 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. 367 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures