Route reliability record
DCA→BUF
Washington to Buffalo
- Flights
- 1,162
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 296 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,162 DCA to BUF flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DCA to BUF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 75.7% of the time and Saturday flights 72.7%, against 64.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 127 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,101 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
64.6% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 1,162 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% 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 BUF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 6 | 83.3% | 47 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 164 | 66.2% | 67 min | 6.10% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 729 | 64.6% | 86 min | 4.80% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 263 | 64.1% | 50 min | 5.70% | D− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Buffalo
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 3 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BWI → BUFBaltimore to Buffalo | Southwest Airlines | 75.0% | 76.4% | 1.78% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. BWI → ROCBaltimore to Rochester | Southwest Airlines | 74.1% | 75.2% | 1.45% | 11am–2pm, Fri | — |
| 3. DCA → ROCWashington to Rochester | PSA Airlines | 63.3% | 67.2% | 5.82% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 4. DCA → BUFWashington to Buffalo | PSA Airlines | 61.5% | 64.6% | 4.80% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 22 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–11am286 flights75.7%
- 11am–2pm175 flights74.3%
- 2pm–5pm352 flights60.9%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am345 flights54.0%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.0% on time, against 75.7% 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 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 30 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.
February is the weak month at 50.6% on time, against 81.0% in September. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 54.7%. 18 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 56% of the 29,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
56% 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 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 28,932 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 75.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.16%, against 1.81% 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.0% 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 296 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 runs 65.1% on time across 1,162 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,162 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 BUF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.16% 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. 1,101 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to BUF questions
How often is DCA to BUF delayed?
About 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 35.1% of the 1,162 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 BUF compared with the rest of the country?
64.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to BUF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 75.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 54.0%, 22 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 February delays on DCA to BUF?
February is the weakest month at 50.6% on time, compared with 81.0% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- BUF to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DCA to BUF66.2%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to BUF64.6%
- Republic Airways on DCA to BUF64.1%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ORD to BUF, a related route70.6%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- American Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record66.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record64.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to BUF and BUF to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.