Carrier route record

MQBUF→DCA

Envoy Air · Buffalo to Washington

Flights: 164
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy on BUF to DCA earns an F−, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 53.4% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 24 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average a little over an hour. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 164 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on BUF to DCA runs 24 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 242 extra late arrivals.

On time

53.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 148 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

9.15%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

65.1%

Every carrier on BUF to DCA, 1,162 flights

These figures cover 164 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 20.3% 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

Envoy against every carrier on BUF to DCA

Envoy flew 164 of the 1,162 flights on BUF to DCA, about 14% of it. Its 53.4% on time is 12 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.1%. 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 53.4%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BUF to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	6	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	264	76.1%	66 min	1.89%	B
PSA Airlines	728	63.1%	122 min	6.18%	D−
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	164	53.4%	72 min	9.15%	F−

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 164 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 53.4% 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%

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 53.4% on time across 164 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 55 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.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 4,992 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
55%
National Airspace System
36%
Extreme weather
5%
Carrier
3%
Security
0%

55% 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 4,992 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 4,992 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 1,813 minutes out of 4,992, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 9.15%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 20.3% 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.

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 66.2% on time across 164 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 164 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 9.15% 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. 148 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