Route reliability record
CAE→DCA
Columbia to Washington
- Flights
- 1,093
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 408 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.7% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,093 CAE to DCA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly CAE to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.4% of the time and Saturday flights 80.4%, against 72.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,025 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.67%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
70.9% on time across 927 flights
These figures cover 1,093 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% 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 CAE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 28 | 89.3% | 54 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 138 | 82.2% | 54 min | 2.17% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 927 | 70.9% | 102 min | 6.36% | C− |
Flight by flight
Flights on CAE to DCA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 39 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–8am349 flights87.4%
- 8am–11am284 flights80.1%
- 11am–2pm79 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm75 flights65.8%
- 5pm–8pm306 flights48.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.5% on time, against 87.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 349 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
February is the weak month at 56.8% on time, against 83.0% 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 116 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 27,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 27,153 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,403 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 5.67%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 10.8% 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 408 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 68.9% on time across 1,092 flights, 4 points below 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. 1,093 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.
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 5.67% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,025 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CAE to DCA questions
How often is CAE to DCA delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.1% of the 1,093 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is CAE to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
72.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CAE to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 87.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 48.5%, 39 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 February delays on CAE to DCA?
February is the weakest month at 56.8% on time, compared with 83.0% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 CAE — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on CAE to DCA82.2%
- PSA Airlines on CAE to DCA70.9%
- CAE to ATL, a related route87.6%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- CAE to DFW, a related route81.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. CAE to DCA and DCA to CAE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.