Route reliability record
DCA→CHS
Washington to Charleston
- Flights
- 1,755
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 444 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,755 DCA to CHS flights, of which Republic Airways flew 375 at 80.7% on time.
Best time to fly DCA to CHS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 80.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.8%, against 70.2% for the route overall.
Republic Airways is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 80.7% on time across 375 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,692 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
80.7% on time across 375 flights
These figures cover 1,755 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to CHS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 80.7% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 503 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 375 | 80.7% | 69 min | 3.47% | B− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 873 | 68.6% | 83 min | 4.35% | C− |
| American Airlines | 503 | 65.0% | 78 min | 2.19% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Charleston
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → CHSWashington to Charleston | United Airlines | 88.7% | 89.5% | 0.86% | 8am–11am, Thu | — |
| 2. BWI → CHSBaltimore to Charleston | Southwest Airlines | 79.5% | 80.6% | 1.38% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | — |
| 3. DCA → CHSWashington to Charleston | Republic Airways | 77.9% | 80.7% | 3.47% | 8pm–5am, Tue | — |
| 4. DCA → CHSWashington to Charleston | PSA Airlines | 65.6% | 68.6% | 4.35% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 5. DCA → CHSWashington to Charleston | American Airlines | 63.6% | 65.0% | 2.19% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 16 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am358 flights80.3%
- 11am–2pm367 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm351 flights72.9%
- 5pm–8pm345 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am333 flights66.8%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 80.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 59.7% on time, against 78.8% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 152 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.1%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 40,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 40,109 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 80.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.7% 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 444 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 72.7% on time across 1,755 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,755 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CHS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,692 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to CHS questions
How often is DCA to CHS delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 29.8% of the 1,755 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to CHS?
Republic Airways leads at 80.7% on time across 375 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 65.0%, a gap of 16 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to CHS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 80.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.9%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on DCA to CHS?
December is the weakest month at 59.7% on time, compared with 78.8% in April. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- CHS to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on DCA to CHS80.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to CHS68.6%
- American Airlines on DCA to CHS65.0%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ATL to CHS, a related route83.7%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record68.6%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. DCA to CHS and CHS to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.