Carrier route record
AADCA→BOS
American Airlines · Washington to Boston
- Flights
- 2,264
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to BOS draws a C−. About 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 2,264 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 3,983 at 77.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DCA to BOS runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 115 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,194 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.4%
Every carrier on DCA to BOS, 9,081 flights
These figures cover 2,264 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% 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
American against every carrier on DCA to BOS
American flew 2,264 of the 9,081 flights on DCA to BOS, about 25% of it. Its 66.1% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.9% to JetBlue at 65.8%. 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 77.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 65.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,633 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 3,983 | 77.9% | 70 min | 4.22% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 198 | 76.9% | 75 min | 6.06% | B− |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 53 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,264 | 66.1% | 81 min | 3.05% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 2,633 | 65.8% | 90 min | 3.91% | C− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.2% 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 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 45 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am300 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am323 flights75.9%
- 11am–2pm219 flights67.3%
- 2pm–5pm556 flights60.3%
- 5pm–8pm437 flights48.8%
- 8pm–5am429 flights63.9%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.8% on time, against 93.5% 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 556 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DCA to BOS through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 55.3%. June is the strongest month at 82.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. September was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.3%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 60,000 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
- 22%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 4%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 60,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 59,934 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 93.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.05%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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. 15.4% 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.
At 399 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.5% on time across 2,262 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,264 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on DCA to BOS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.05% 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. 2,194 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BOS, every carrier
- American on BOS to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BOS77.9%
- Envoy Air on DCA to BOS76.9%
- JetBlue Airways on DCA to BOS65.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Boston Logan International (BOS) 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.