Carrier route record
OHBUF→DCA
PSA Airlines · Buffalo to Washington
- Flights
- 644
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on BUF to DCA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 2.3 hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 644 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on BUF to DCA runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 151 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 603 completed flights
Avg delay
136 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
65.5%
Every carrier on BUF to DCA, 1,108 flights
These figures cover 644 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.4% 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
PSA against every carrier on BUF to DCA
PSA flew 644 of the 1,108 flights on BUF to DCA, most of the route. Its 62.2% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Envoy at 60.5%. Three 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 (this page) | 644 | 62.2% | 136 min | 6.37% | D− |
| Envoy Airthin 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 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 39 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am157 flights85.1%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm295 flights56.0%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm147 flights46.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.5% on time, against 85.1% 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 295 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on BUF to DCA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 78.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 69.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.6%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on BUF to DCA runs when it is late
When PSA on BUF to DCA is late it tends to be very late: 117 of its 228 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 61 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early132 flights21.9%
- Within 15 min243 flights40.3%
- 15–29 min late49 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late62 flights10.3%
- 1–2 hours late56 flights9.3%
- 2+ hours late61 flights10.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 603 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
30 of 204 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 54 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 PSA on BUF to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 16 August 2026, 29 hours 51 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 16 August 2026 | 29 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 February 2026 | 23 hours 11 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 October 2025 | 20 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 July 2026 | 18 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 February 2026 | 18 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 31,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 29 to one. The split is drawn from 31,101 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.1% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.37%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
19.4% 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 61.8% on time across 644 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 644 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 BUF to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.37% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 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. 603 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BUF to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to BUF, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BUF to DCA75.9%
- Envoy Air on BUF to DCA60.5%
- PSA Airlines 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.