Carrier route record

AADCA→BOS

American Airlines · Washington to Boston

Flights: 2,233
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,233 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 3,998 at 76.9% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DCA to BOS runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 118 extra late arrivals.

On time

65.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,166 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.96%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

70.1%

Every carrier on DCA to BOS, 9,104 flights

These figures cover 2,233 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on DCA to BOS

American flew 2,233 of the 9,104 flights on DCA to BOS, about 25% of it. Its 65.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.5% to JetBlue at 63.3%. 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 76.9% of the time; JetBlue Airways manages 63.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,624 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to BOS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	8	87.5%	53 min	0.00%	A+
Republic Airways	3,998	76.9%	70 min	4.40%	B−
Envoy Airthin sample	241	73.1%	65 min	7.47%	C−
American Airlines (this page)	2,233	65.5%	84 min	2.96%	C
JetBlue Airways	2,624	63.3%	89 min	5.14%	D−

JetBlue Airways cancels 5.1% 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 45 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am279 flights93.8%
8am–11am358 flights76.7%
11am–2pm163 flights65.2%
2pm–5pm583 flights58.6%
5pm–8pm438 flights48.5%
8pm–5am412 flights64.1%

Scale runs 40% to 100%.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.5% on time, against 93.8% 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 583 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on DCA to BOS through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.June best, March worst

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 79.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 59.2%, a spread of 20 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on DCA to BOS runs when it is late

The 748 late arrivals split 189 under half an hour, 212 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 347 an hour or more.

15+ min early512 flights23.6%
Within 15 min906 flights41.8%
15–29 min late189 flights8.7%
30–59 min late212 flights9.8%
1–2 hours late207 flights9.6%
2+ hours late140 flights6.5%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 2,166 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 703 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 62 made it up before arrival. 107 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on DCA to BOS

The latest arrival of the period was on 10 February 2026, 14 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of American on DCA to BOS in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
10 February 2026	14 hours 5 minutes	Extreme weather
2 February 2026	13 hours 3 minutes	Carrier
30 November 2025	12 hours 31 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
22 October 2025	10 hours 57 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
25 November 2025	10 hours 12 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 63,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 63,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 62,591 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 93.8% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.96%, against 1.89% 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

16.0% 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 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 75.1% on time across 2,231 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 2,233 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 2.96% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 2,166 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures