Carrier route record
OHCLT→DCA
PSA Airlines · Charlotte to Washington
- Flights
- 238
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on CLT to DCA sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 238 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on CLT to DCA runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 236 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
67.5%
Every carrier on CLT to DCA, 2,682 flights
These figures cover 238 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on CLT to DCA
PSA flew 238 of the 2,682 flights on CLT to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 72.9% to American at 66.9%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample | 238 | 72.9% | 72 min | 0.42% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 2,444 | 66.9% | 69 min | 2.78% | C |
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 21 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm166 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm61 flights57.4%
- 8pm–5am8 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.4% on time, against 78.0% for the 11am–2pm 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 166 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on CLT to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202560 flights71.7%
- Oct–Dec 202566 flights66.7%
- Apr–Jun 202653 flights81.1%
- Jul–Sep 202659 flights73.7%
Scale runs 60% to 85%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.9% on time across 238 flights.
PSA on CLT to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 66.7%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 60 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.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 63.6%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on CLT to DCA runs when it is late
PSA on CLT to DCA often beats the schedule: 59 of 236 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 64 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early59 flights25.0%
- Within 15 min113 flights47.9%
- 15–29 min late21 flights8.9%
- 30–59 min late22 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights3.8%
- 2+ hours late12 flights5.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 236 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
9 of 51 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 CLT to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 November 2025, 6 hours 32 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across November, August, June and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 November 2025 | 6 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 August 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 June 2026 | 4 hours 28 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 July 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 1 July 2026 | 3 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 4,577 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,577 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 4,577 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 331 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.9% on time across 234 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 238 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 CLT to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 238 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 236 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLT to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to CLT, the return leg
- American Airlines on CLT to DCA66.9%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.