Carrier route record
OHBTV→DCA
PSA Airlines · Burlington to Washington
- Flights
- 859
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on BTV to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.4% 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 D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 859 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on BTV to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 811 completed flights
Avg delay
129 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
66.4%
Every carrier on BTV to DCA, 1,168 flights
These figures cover 859 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.5% 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 BTV to DCA
PSA flew 859 of the 1,168 flights on BTV to DCA, most of the route. Its 64.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 71.6% to PSA at 64.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 859 | 64.6% | 129 min | 5.36% | D− |
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 27 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–8am199 flights81.5%
- 8am–11am6 flights—
- 11am–2pm347 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights59.2%
- 5pm–8pm223 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.4% on time, against 81.5% 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
PSA on BTV to DCA through the year
February is the weak month at 34.4% on time, against 83.9% in September. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.1%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
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 37,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 21%Extreme weather
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 37,015 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 37,000 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 5.36%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 16.5% 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 69.2% on time across 860 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 859 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 BTV to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.36% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.1 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. 811 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.