Carrier route record
OHBNA→DCA
PSA Airlines · Nashville to Washington
- Flights
- 387
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 387 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,861 at 75.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on BNA to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
117 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
10.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on BNA to DCA, 4,330 flights
These figures cover 387 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.3% 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 BNA to DCA
PSA flew 387 of the 4,330 flights on BNA to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 65.1% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.4% to PSA at 65.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 78.4% | 65 min | 5.43% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,861 | 75.1% | 62 min | 2.90% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 116 | 73.6% | 60 min | 5.17% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,653 | 72.2% | 52 min | 1.45% | C |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 387 | 65.1% | 117 min | 10.08% | C− |
No carrier stands out. Republic tops the table at 75.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 42 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am57 flights84.6%
- 8am–11am21 flights—
- 11am–2pm34 flights65.6%
- 2pm–5pm196 flights63.5%
- 5pm–8pm50 flights42.5%
- 8pm–5am29 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.5% on time, against 84.6% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 196 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on BNA to DCA through the year
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 82.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 43.8%. 39 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 54% of the 14,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
54% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 14,163 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 84.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 10.08%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in ten 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. 17.3% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 59.2% on time across 387 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 387 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 10.08% 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. 347 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BNA to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to BNA, the return leg
- American Airlines on BNA to DCA78.4%
- Republic Airways on BNA to DCA75.1%
- Envoy Air on BNA to DCA73.6%
- Southwest Airlines on BNA to DCA72.2%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Nashville International (BNA) delay statistics
- 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.