Carrier route record
MQBUF→DCA
Envoy Air · Buffalo to Washington
- Flights
- 193
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on BUF to DCA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 193 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Envoy on BUF to DCA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 168 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 177 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
65.5%
Every carrier on BUF to DCA, 1,108 flights
These figures cover 193 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on BUF to DCA
Envoy flew 193 of the 1,108 flights on BUF to DCA, about 17% of it. Its 60.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Envoy at 60.5%. 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 | 6 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 265 | 75.9% | 62 min | 1.51% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 644 | 62.2% | 136 min | 6.37% | D− |
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 193 | 60.5% | 72 min | 7.77% | D− |
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 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 193 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's BUF to DCA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 60.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on BUF to DCA through the year
- Oct–Dec 202539 flights61.8%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights42.5%
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights65.9%
- Jul–Sep 202629 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 70%. 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 60.5% on time across 193 flights.
Envoy on BUF to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 65.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 42.5%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 64 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Envoy on BUF to DCA runs when it is late
The 70 late arrivals split 23 under half an hour, 16 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 31 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early41 flights23.2%
- Within 15 min66 flights37.3%
- 15–29 min late23 flights13.0%
- 30–59 min late16 flights9.0%
- 1–2 hours late16 flights9.0%
- 2+ hours late15 flights8.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 177 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 50 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 25 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for Envoy on BUF to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 February 2026, 4 hours 45 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 February 2026 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 January 2026 | 4 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 16 November 2025 | 3 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 March 2026 | 3 hours 38 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 13 January 2026 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 5,064 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 3%Carrier
- 0%Security
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,064 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 5,064 reported delay minutes.
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,822 minutes out of 5,064, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 7.77%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about 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
17.5% 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.
At 296 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.8% on time across 193 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 193 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 BUF to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.77% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 177 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUF to DCA, every carrier
- Envoy on DCA to BUF, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BUF to DCA75.9%
- PSA Airlines on BUF to DCA62.2%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.