Carrier route record
WNCMH→DCA
Southwest Airlines · Columbus to Washington
- Flights
- 351
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on CMH to DCA draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 351 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 971 at 67.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on CMH to DCA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 174 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.3%
Every carrier on CMH to DCA, 2,055 flights
These figures cover 351 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.2% 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
Southwest against every carrier on CMH to DCA
Southwest flew 351 of the 2,055 flights on CMH to DCA, about 17% of it. Its 60.2% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 89.1% to Southwest at 60.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 | 315 | 89.1% | 45 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 971 | 67.8% | 57 min | 3.60% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 418 | 65.0% | 105 min | 6.46% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample | 351 | 60.2% | 67 min | 1.14% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 6.5% 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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm99 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm137 flights56.3%
- 8pm–5am—
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 77.9% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 50.0%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 137 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on CMH to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights76.4%
- Oct–Dec 202583 flights61.4%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights47.0%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights55.1%
Scale runs 40% 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 60.2% on time across 351 flights.
Southwest on CMH to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 47.0%, a swing of 29 points on roughly 88 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 65.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 52.0%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 9,135 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.
- 55%National Airspace System
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
55% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 5,039 minutes out of 9,135, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 9,135 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.14% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.85%.
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. 14.2% 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.4% on time across 351 flights, 20 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 20 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 351 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 Southwest on CMH to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 351 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 60.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 344 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CMH to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to CMH, the return leg
- Envoy Air on CMH to DCA89.1%
- Republic Airways on CMH to DCA67.8%
- PSA Airlines on CMH to DCA65.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.