Carrier route record
YXDCA→CAE
Republic Airways · Washington to Columbia
- Flights
- 137
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DCA to CAE lands a B−, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 137 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's DCA to CAE record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 131 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.9%
Every carrier on DCA to CAE, 1,092 flights
These figures cover 137 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on DCA to CAE
Republic flew 137 of the 1,092 flights on DCA to CAE, about 13% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 68.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.2% to PSA at 66.4%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page)thin sample | 137 | 83.2% | 50 min | 4.38% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 29 | 77.8% | 58 min | 6.90% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 926 | 66.4% | 68 min | 6.05% | C− |
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 137 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am93 flights85.4%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am42 flights77.5%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 85.4% on time for the 8am–11am window against 77.5% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 93 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DCA to CAE through the year
- Jul–Sep 202584 flights83.1%
- Oct–Dec 20259 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202638 flights85.3%
- Apr–Jun 20266 flights—
Scale runs 75% 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 83.2% on time across 137 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on DCA to CAE logged 84 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 9 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 38 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 6 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 83.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 67% of the 1,105 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.
- 67%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
67% 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 1,105 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 67 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 1,105 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 85.4% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.38%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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
5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 408 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 82.2% on time across 138 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. 137 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 CAE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 50 minutes; 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. 131 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.