Carrier route record

YXDCA→BUF

Republic Airways · Washington to Buffalo

Flights: 263
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic 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 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 263 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on DCA to BUF runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 135 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 248 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.70%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

64.9%

Every carrier on DCA to BUF, 1,162 flights

These figures cover 263 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% 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

Republic against every carrier on DCA to BUF

Republic flew 263 of the 1,162 flights on DCA to BUF, about 23% of it. Its 64.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 83.3% to Republic at 64.1%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to BUF
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 Airways (this page)thin sample	263	64.1%	50 min	5.70%	D−

Departure window

When Republic 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 263 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am27 flights—
11am–2pm4 flights—
2pm–5pm40 flights60.0%
5pm–8pm4 flights—
8pm–5am188 flights61.8%

Scale runs 50% to 65%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 61.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.

Across the year

Republic on DCA to BUF through the year

Jul–Sep 2025102 flights67.7%
Oct–Dec 2025118 flights61.7%
Jan–Mar 202636 flights57.6%
Apr–Jun 20267 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 75%. 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 64.1% on time across 263 flights.

Republic on DCA to BUF did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 67.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 57.6%, a swing of 10 points on roughly 88 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.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 47.5%. 32 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 4,420 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
National Airspace System
25%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
7%

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 4,420 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 4,420 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 5.70%, against 1.81% 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.3% 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.1% on time across 264 flights, 12 points above 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 12 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 263 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 Republic on DCA to BUF

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.70% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 248 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures