Carrier route record
OHCHS→DCA
PSA Airlines · Charleston to Washington
- Flights
- 874
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on CHS to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.9% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 874 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 375 at 77.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on CHS to DCA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 97 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 807 completed flights
Avg delay
125 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on CHS to DCA, 1,755 flights
These figures cover 874 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 CHS to DCA
PSA flew 874 of the 1,755 flights on CHS to DCA, about 50% of it. Its 67.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to PSA at 67.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 25.00% | A− |
| Republic Airways | 375 | 77.4% | 71 min | 4.27% | B− |
| American Airlines | 502 | 76.9% | 94 min | 2.19% | B |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 874 | 67.9% | 125 min | 6.86% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am106 flights92.2%
- 8am–11am37 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm161 flights76.0%
- 2pm–5pm274 flights65.6%
- 5pm–8pm258 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am38 flights52.9%
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 92.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 274 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on CHS to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 47.1% on time, 39 points below August, the best at 86.0%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 64.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 32,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 26%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 32,269 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 92.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.86%, against 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.9% 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 444 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 68.6% on time across 873 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. 874 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 CHS to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two 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. 807 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CHS to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to CHS, the return leg
- Republic Airways on CHS to DCA77.4%
- American Airlines on CHS to DCA76.9%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.