Route reliability record
DAL→DCA
Dallas to Washington
- Flights
- 1,735
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,184 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 10 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,735 DAL to DCA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
Best time to fly DAL to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Saturday flights 79.8%, against 68.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 96 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,695 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.73%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
68.0% on time across 1,735 flights
These figures cover 1,735 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DAL to DCA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,735 | 68.0% | 61 min | 1.73% | C |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Dallas to Washington
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DFW → IADDallas-Fort Worth to Washington | United Airlines | 83.6% | 84.4% | 0.98% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 2639 07:25 |
| 2. DAL → BWIDallas to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 73.5% | 74.9% | 1.92% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. DFW → DCADallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 70.2% | 72.5% | 3.18% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 1177 08:32 |
| 4. DFW → IADDallas-Fort Worth to Washington | American Airlines | 67.1% | 69.7% | 3.68% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. DAL → DCADallas to Washington | Southwest Airlines | 66.8% | 68.0% | 1.73% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 47 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–8am365 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am312 flights83.4%
- 11am–2pm113 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm412 flights62.8%
- 5pm–8pm401 flights44.3%
- 8pm–5am132 flights60.9%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 44.3% on time, against 91.1% 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 412 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 54.5%. December is the strongest month at 78.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 24 points. March was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 60.9%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 27%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
39% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 33,192 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 91.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.73% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.58%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.3% 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.
The 1,184 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.1% on time across 1,735 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,735 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. December runs 78.5% on time and March 54.5%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,695 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DAL to DCA questions
How often is DAL to DCA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.0% of the 1,735 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is DAL to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
68.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DAL to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 44.3%, 47 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on DAL to DCA?
March is the weakest month at 54.5% on time, compared with 78.5% in December. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to DAL — the return legseparate record
- Dallas Love Field (DAL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- DAL to HOU, a related route74.1%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- DAL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record68.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DAL to DCA and DCA to DAL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.