Carrier route record

MQBOS→DCA

Envoy Air · Boston to Washington

Flights: 198
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 2%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on BOS to DCA lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 198 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 2,262 at 76.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's BOS to DCA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 185 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.0%

Every carrier on BOS to DCA, 9,082 flights

These figures cover 198 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Envoy against every carrier on BOS to DCA

Envoy flew 198 of the 9,082 flights on BOS to DCA, about 2% of it. Its 82.7% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.7% to Delta at 33.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 76.5% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 68.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,634 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on BOS to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	198	82.7%	59 min	5.56%	B−
American Airlines	2,262	76.5%	93 min	3.23%	B−
Republic Airways	3,985	75.6%	62 min	4.22%	B−
JetBlue Airways	2,634	68.8%	72 min	3.80%	C−
Delta Air Linesthin sample	3	33.3%	46 min	0.00%	F+

Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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.

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 198 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's BOS to DCA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.7% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Envoy on BOS to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 20251 flights—
Oct–Dec 202545 flights76.2%
Jan–Mar 202673 flights88.4%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights82.2%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 82.7% on time across 198 flights.

Envoy on BOS to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.4% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.2%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 66 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.6%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 1,881 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
National Airspace System
25%
Carrier
17%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
1%

56% 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 1,881 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 35 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 1,881 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.56%, 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 costs

7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 399 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.9% on time across 198 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. 198 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 Envoy on BOS to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.56% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 185 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures