Carrier route record
MQDCA→BUF
Envoy Air · Washington to Buffalo
- Flights
- 193
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 17%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on DCA to BUF draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 193 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Envoy on DCA to BUF runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 125 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 182 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.2%
Every carrier on DCA to BUF, 1,108 flights
These figures cover 193 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Envoy against every carrier on DCA to BUF
Envoy flew 193 of the 1,108 flights on DCA to BUF, about 17% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 63.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.3% to PSA at 61.8%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Air (this page)thin sample | 193 | 64.8% | 61 min | 5.70% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 265 | 64.7% | 55 min | 3.77% | D− |
| PSA Airlines | 644 | 61.8% | 92 min | 6.37% | D− |
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 Envoy runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 193 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's DCA to BUF record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 64.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on DCA to BUF through the year
- Oct–Dec 202539 flights68.6%
- Jan–Mar 202682 flights55.8%
- Apr–Jun 202643 flights83.3%
- Jul–Sep 202629 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 64.8% on time across 193 flights.
Envoy on DCA to BUF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 55.8%, a swing of 28 points on roughly 64 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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Envoy on DCA to BUF runs when it is late
The 64 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 22 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 22 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early26 flights14.3%
- Within 15 min92 flights50.5%
- 15–29 min late20 flights11.0%
- 30–59 min late22 flights12.1%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights7.1%
- 2+ hours late9 flights4.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 182 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 60 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 13% of them. In the other direction, 12 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 BUF.
The worst days
Worst days for Envoy on DCA to BUF
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 January 2026, 3 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 January 2026 | 3 hours 23 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 12 February 2026 | 3 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 November 2025 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 April 2026 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 May 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 68% of the 3,914 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 68%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
68% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,914 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 3,914 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.70%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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 costs
12.1% 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 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 60.5% on time across 193 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 193 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 Envoy on DCA to BUF
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.70% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 182 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BUF, every carrier
- Envoy on BUF to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to BUF64.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to BUF61.8%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.