Carrier route record
OHDCA→ATL
PSA Airlines · Washington to Atlanta
- Flights
- 1,055
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to ATL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.3% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,055 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 461 at 81.3% on time.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.3% on time across 461 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 965 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.8%
Every carrier on DCA to ATL, 6,813 flights
These figures cover 1,055 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
PSA against every carrier on DCA to ATL
PSA flew 1,055 of the 6,813 flights on DCA to ATL, about 15% of it. Its 68.8% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.4% to American at 67.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 | 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 (this page) | 1,055 | 68.8% | 81 min | 8.25% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 61 | 67.8% | 102 min | 1.64% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.7% 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 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 29 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am173 flights82.4%
- 8am–11am267 flights79.8%
- 11am–2pm60 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm122 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm218 flights53.3%
- 8pm–5am215 flights56.8%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 53.3% on time, against 82.4% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 267 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 55.0% on time, against 80.3% in October. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. August was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.7%. 18 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 55% of the 24,000 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%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
55% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 24,490 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 82.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 8.25%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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. 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.
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 74.7% on time across 1,053 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. 1,055 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 DCA to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.25% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 965 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ATL, every carrier
- PSA on ATL to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to ATL82.4%
- Republic Airways on DCA to ATL81.3%
- Delta Air Lines on DCA to ATL80.9%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to ATL79.1%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.