Route reliability record
DCA→BTV
Washington to Burlington
- Flights
- 1,169
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 437 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.4% 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 1,169 DCA to BTV flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly DCA to BTV: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.5% of the time and Saturday flights 80.7%, against 70.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 76 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,115 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
69.2% on time across 860 flights
These figures cover 1,169 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to BTV
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 77 | 77.1% | 91 min | 7.79% | B− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 232 | 70.4% | 63 min | 2.59% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 860 | 69.2% | 84 min | 4.53% | C− |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am347 flights72.8%
- 11am–2pm121 flights78.5%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights66.7%
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am344 flights66.7%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 78.5% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 66.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 47.7% on time, against 80.2% in January. 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 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.6%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 27,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
54% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 26,727 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.36%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.5% 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 437 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 66.4% on time across 1,168 flights, 4 points below 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,169 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BTV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.36% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,115 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to BTV questions
How often is DCA to BTV delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 30.0% of the 1,169 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DCA to BTV compared with the rest of the country?
70.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to BTV?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 78.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.7%, 12 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on DCA to BTV?
December is the weakest month at 47.7% on time, compared with 80.2% in January. Across the year that is 33 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BTV to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on DCA to BTV70.4%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to BTV69.2%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ORD to BTV, a related route69.0%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record77.1%
- American Airlines on-time record70.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record69.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to BTV and BTV to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DCA to BTV’s on-time badge on your site
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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.