Carrier route record
YXDCA→CAE
Republic Airways · Washington to Columbia
- Flights
- 116
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DCA to CAE lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That rests on 116 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's DCA to CAE record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 110 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.7%
Every carrier on DCA to CAE, 1,092 flights
These figures cover 116 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on DCA to CAE
Republic flew 116 of the 1,092 flights on DCA to CAE, about 11% of it. Its 82.7% on time is 16 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.7% to PSA at 64.4%. 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 | 116 | 82.7% | 54 min | 5.17% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 49 | 72.7% | 55 min | 10.20% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 927 | 64.4% | 77 min | 5.83% | 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 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 116 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am72 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am43 flights78.0%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 85.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 78.0% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 72 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DCA to CAE through the year
- Jul–Sep 202554 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 20259 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202638 flights85.3%
- Apr–Jun 20266 flights—
- Jul–Sep 20269 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 82.7% on time across 116 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on DCA to CAE logged 54 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 9 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 38 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 6 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 9 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.7% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late Republic on DCA to CAE runs when it is late
Republic on DCA to CAE often beats the schedule: 30 of 110 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 19 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 4 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 6 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early30 flights27.3%
- Within 15 min61 flights55.5%
- 15–29 min late9 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late4 flights3.6%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late2 flights1.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 110 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 19 of 110 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for Republic on DCA to CAE
The latest arrival of the period was on 17 September 2025, 3 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 17 September 2025 | 3 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 July 2026 | 2 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 July 2026 | 1 hour 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 1 February 2026 | 1 hour 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 February 2026 | 1 hour 3 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 71% of the 1,027 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 71%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
71% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,027 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 71 to one. The split is drawn from 1,027 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 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.17%, against 1.89% 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 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 85.1% on time across 117 flights, within 2 points 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. 116 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 5.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 55 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. 110 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.