Carrier route record

OHCMH→DCA

PSA Airlines · Columbus to Washington

Flights: 418
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on CMH to DCA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 418 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on CMH to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 126 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 391 completed flights

Avg delay

105 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.46%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.3%

Every carrier on CMH to DCA, 2,055 flights

These figures cover 418 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.3% 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 CMH to DCA

PSA flew 418 of the 2,055 flights on CMH to DCA, about 20% of it. Its 65.0% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 89.1% to Southwest at 60.2%. Two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on CMH to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	315	89.1%	45 min	0.63%	A+
Republic Airways	971	67.8%	57 min	3.60%	C−
PSA Airlines (this page)	418	65.0%	105 min	6.46%	C−
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	351	60.2%	67 min	1.14%	D

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 52 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–8am36 flights91.2%
8am–11am134 flights75.8%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm194 flights59.0%
5pm–8pm54 flights39.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 30% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 39.1% on time, against 91.2% 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 194 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on CMH to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025170 flights64.8%
Oct–Dec 202588 flights62.7%
Jan–Mar 202682 flights56.2%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights76.3%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 65.0% on time across 418 flights.

PSA on CMH to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 76.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 56.2%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 105 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 76.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 51.6%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 14,000 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,373 reported delay minutes.

34% 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 14,000 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 run at 6.46%, 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. 15.3% 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 323 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 71.2% on time across 419 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 418 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 CMH to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.46% 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. 391 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