Carrier route record
OHDCA→BNA
PSA Airlines · Washington to Nashville
- Flights
- 399
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to BNA 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 399 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 1,845 at 81.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on DCA to BNA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 172 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.77%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.7%
Every carrier on DCA to BNA, 4,384 flights
These figures cover 399 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on DCA to BNA
PSA flew 399 of the 4,384 flights on DCA to BNA, about 9% of it. Its 60.1% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 81.8% to PSA at 60.1%. Two 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 81.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 74.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,707 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 1,845 | 81.8% | 64 min | 2.44% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 143 | 76.6% | 58 min | 1.40% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,707 | 74.4% | 58 min | 2.23% | C |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 290 | 63.8% | 82 min | 4.83% | D− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 399 | 60.1% | 78 min | 8.77% | D− |
Republic leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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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 10 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am76 flights64.7%
- 11am–2pm149 flights57.7%
- 2pm–5pm23 flights—
- 5pm–8pm57 flights56.9%
- 8pm–5am77 flights54.5%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 64.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 149 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to BNA through the year
- Oct–Dec 202569 flights47.0%
- Jan–Mar 2026143 flights61.7%
- Apr–Jun 2026117 flights68.5%
- Jul–Sep 202670 flights55.2%
Scale runs 40% to 75%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 60.1% on time across 399 flights.
PSA on DCA to BNA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 68.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 47.0%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 100 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 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 49.2%, a spread of 33 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to BNA runs when it is late
The 145 late arrivals split 42 under half an hour, 42 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 61 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early63 flights17.4%
- Within 15 min155 flights42.7%
- 15–29 min late42 flights11.6%
- 30–59 min late42 flights11.6%
- 1–2 hours late36 flights9.9%
- 2+ hours late25 flights6.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
21 of 140 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 26 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at BNA.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on DCA to BNA
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 March 2026, 24 hours 8 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 23 March 2026 | 24 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 July 2026 | 5 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 July 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 24 April 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 March 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 to one. The split is drawn from 11,365 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 64.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 8.77%, against 1.89% 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
16.8% 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.
The 562 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.3% on time across 399 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 399 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 BNA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.77% 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. 363 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BNA, every carrier
- PSA on BNA to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BNA81.8%
- Envoy Air on DCA to BNA76.6%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to BNA74.4%
- American Airlines on DCA to BNA63.8%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Nashville International (BNA) 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.