Carrier route record
OHDCA→BUF
PSA Airlines · Washington to Buffalo
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 63%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to BUF draws a D−. 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 729 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to BUF runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 130 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 693 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.9%
Every carrier on DCA to BUF, 1,162 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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
PSA against every carrier on DCA to BUF
PSA flew 729 of the 1,162 flights on DCA to BUF, most of the route. Its 64.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.3% to Republic at 64.1%. Three 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 Airthin sample | 164 | 66.2% | 67 min | 6.10% | C− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 729 | 64.6% | 86 min | 4.80% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 263 | 64.1% | 50 min | 5.70% | D− |
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 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–11am259 flights74.7%
- 11am–2pm161 flights74.7%
- 2pm–5pm158 flights56.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am151 flights42.4%
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.4% on time, against 74.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 259 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to BUF through the year
February is the weak month at 47.7% on time, against 89.4% 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 96 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 70.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 55.9%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 21,000 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
- 23%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,004 reported delay minutes.
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 21,000 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.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.4% 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 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 63.1% on time across 728 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 729 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 PSA on DCA to BUF
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 693 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to BUF, every carrier
- PSA on BUF to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to BUF66.2%
- Republic Airways on DCA to BUF64.1%
- PSA Airlines 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.