Carrier route record
OHDCA→BUF
PSA Airlines · Washington to Buffalo
- Flights
- 644
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 58%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to BUF draws a D−. Roughly 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 644 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on DCA to BUF runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 602 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.2%
Every carrier on DCA to BUF, 1,108 flights
These figures cover 644 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on DCA to BUF
PSA flew 644 of the 1,108 flights on DCA to BUF, most of the route. Its 61.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.3% to PSA at 61.8%. 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 | 193 | 64.8% | 61 min | 5.70% | D− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 265 | 64.7% | 55 min | 3.77% | D− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 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 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 36 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am212 flights75.0%
- 11am–2pm118 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights50.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am157 flights41.6%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.6% on time, against 77.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 212 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. June was the busiest month here, with 86 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 69.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 50.0%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to BUF runs when it is late
The 230 late arrivals split 59 under half an hour, 71 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 100 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early112 flights18.6%
- Within 15 min260 flights43.2%
- 15–29 min late59 flights9.8%
- 30–59 min late71 flights11.8%
- 1–2 hours late58 flights9.6%
- 2+ hours late42 flights7.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 602 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 218 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 24 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 36 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 PSA on DCA to BUF
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 February 2026, 23 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in February 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 February 2026 | 23 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 20 February 2026 | 10 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 February 2026 | 9 hours 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 April 2026 | 9 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 May 2026 | 9 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 21,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 21,250 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 6.37%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
16.6% 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 62.2% on time across 644 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 644 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 6.37% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 602 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 BUF64.8%
- Republic Airways on DCA to BUF64.7%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.