Route reliability record
BTV→DCA
Burlington to Washington
- Flights
- 1,168
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 437 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,168 BTV to DCA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly BTV to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 81.3% of the time and Saturday flights 73.2%, against 66.4% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 112 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,104 completed flights
Avg delay
123 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
64.6% on time across 859 flights
These figures cover 1,168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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 BTV 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 71.6% | 101 min | 3.02% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 77 | 70.4% | 103 min | 7.79% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 859 | 64.6% | 129 min | 5.36% | D− |
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 24 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–8am346 flights81.3%
- 8am–11am11 flights—
- 11am–2pm347 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm117 flights59.8%
- 5pm–8pm347 flights57.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.2% on time, against 81.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 347 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 31 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.
December is the weak month at 46.5% on time, against 77.0% in August. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 58.4%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 46,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 18%Extreme weather
- 16%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 18% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 45,550 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.
Cancellations run at 5.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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. 15.1% 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 437 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.0% on time across 1,169 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,168 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 5.05% 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. 1,104 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BTV to DCA questions
How often is BTV to DCA delayed?
About 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 33.6% of the 1,168 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is BTV to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
66.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BTV to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 81.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 57.2%, 24 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 December delays on BTV to DCA?
December is the weakest month at 46.5% on time, compared with 77.0% in August. Across the year that is 31 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 BTV — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on BTV to DCA71.6%
- PSA Airlines on BTV to DCA64.6%
- BTV to ORD, a related route66.2%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- BTV to PHL, a related route77.0%
- American Airlines on-time record71.6%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record64.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. BTV to DCA and DCA to BTV are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed BTV to DCA’s on-time badge on your site
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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.