Carrier route record

MQDCA→ATL

Envoy Air · Washington to Atlanta

Flights: 259
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 6

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

Envoy on DCA to ATL lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 259 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 461 at 81.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's DCA to ATL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 255 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.54%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on DCA to ATL, 6,813 flights

These figures cover 259 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Envoy against every carrier on DCA to ATL

Envoy flew 259 of the 6,813 flights on DCA to ATL, about 4% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.4% to American at 67.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 81.3% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 68.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,055 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to ATL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin sample	259	82.4%	67 min	1.54%	B
Republic Airways	461	81.3%	52 min	3.69%	B−
Delta Air Lines	3,838	80.9%	88 min	2.81%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,139	79.1%	62 min	2.11%	B
PSA Airlines	1,055	68.8%	81 min	8.25%	C−
American Airlinesthin sample	61	67.8%	102 min	1.64%	C

PSA Airlines cancels 8.3% 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 Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am61 flights88.5%
11am–2pm144 flights81.6%
2pm–5pm54 flights77.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.5% of the time, against 77.4% for the afternoon window. That is 11 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 144 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on DCA to ATL through the year

Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
Oct–Dec 202577 flights80.3%
Jan–Mar 202679 flights84.2%
Apr–Jun 202678 flights80.8%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 82.4% on time across 259 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on DCA to ATL held fairly steady: 80.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.2% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 80.8% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 95.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.7%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 3,014 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%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
1%

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 3,014 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 3,014 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,078 of the 3,014 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.54% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 547 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 72.2% on time across 259 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 259 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 Envoy on DCA to ATL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 259 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 255 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