Carrier route record
AADCA→BDL
American Airlines · Washington to Hartford
- Flights
- 286
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to BDL draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 286 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 402 at 74.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DCA to BDL runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 169 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 270 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.24%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
68.3%
Every carrier on DCA to BDL, 1,680 flights
These figures cover 286 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on DCA to BDL
American flew 286 of the 1,680 flights on DCA to BDL, about 17% of it. Its 60.4% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 60.4%. 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 74.0% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 984 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 8 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways | 402 | 74.0% | 54 min | 2.24% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 984 | 67.8% | 78 min | 8.13% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 286 | 60.4% | 73 min | 5.24% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 8.1% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American 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 6 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am34 flights79.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm124 flights61.5%
- 5pm–8pm59 flights56.1%
- 8pm–5am66 flights50.8%
Scale runs 40% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.8% on time, against 79.4% for the 8am–11am 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 124 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DCA to BDL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202582 flights60.0%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights60.4%
- Jan–Mar 2026118 flights63.0%
- Apr–Jun 202613 flights—
- Jul–Sep 202624 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 70%. 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 60.4% on time across 286 flights.
Quarter by quarter American on DCA to BDL held fairly steady: 60.0% in Jul–Sep 2025, 60.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 63.0% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 68.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 42.5%, a spread of 26 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DCA to BDL runs when it is late
The 107 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 44 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early39 flights14.4%
- Within 15 min124 flights45.9%
- 15–29 min late36 flights13.3%
- 30–59 min late27 flights10.0%
- 1–2 hours late25 flights9.3%
- 2+ hours late19 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 270 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 109 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. 12 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DCA to BDL
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 October 2025, 5 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 October 2025 | 5 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 September 2025 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 February 2026 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 December 2025 | 4 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 February 2026 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 7,841 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,841 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 7,841 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 79.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.24%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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
16.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 313 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.2% on time across 284 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 286 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 American on DCA to BDL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.24% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 270 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BDL, every carrier
- American on BDL to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BDL74.0%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to BDL67.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.