Carrier route record

OHCLT→DCA

PSA Airlines · Charlotte to Washington

Flights: 300
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 300 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on CLT to DCA runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 296 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

67.7%

Every carrier on CLT to DCA, 2,684 flights

These figures cover 300 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

PSA against every carrier on CLT to DCA

PSA flew 300 of the 2,684 flights on CLT to DCA, about 11% of it. Its 72.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 72.0% to American at 67.2%.

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 CLT to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample	300	72.0%	81 min	1.00%	C
American Airlines	2,384	67.2%	68 min	2.64%	C

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 32 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–8am—
8am–11am2 flights—
11am–2pm165 flights81.1%
2pm–5pm38 flights48.6%
5pm–8pm87 flights63.2%
8pm–5am8 flights—

Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 81.1% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 48.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 165 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on CLT to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025181 flights71.2%
Oct–Dec 202566 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 202653 flights81.1%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. 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 72.0% on time across 300 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 100 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 59.0%. 24 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 6,725 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
46%
National Airspace System
26%
Extreme weather
19%
Carrier
9%
Security
1%

Extreme weather accounts for 19% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,725 reported delay minutes.

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 6,725 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.33%.

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. 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 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 66.7% on time across 295 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 300 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. 300 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 72.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 296 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