Carrier route record
OHDCA→CHS
PSA Airlines · Washington to Charleston
- Flights
- 873
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to CHS carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.3% 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 873 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 375 at 80.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to CHS runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 834 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.35%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on DCA to CHS, 1,755 flights
These figures cover 873 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.5% 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
PSA against every carrier on DCA to CHS
PSA flew 873 of the 1,755 flights on DCA to CHS, about 50% of it. Its 68.6% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 80.7% to American at 65.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 873 | 68.6% | 83 min | 4.35% | C− |
| American Airlines | 503 | 65.0% | 78 min | 2.19% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 3.5% 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.
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 28 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–11am153 flights79.7%
- 11am–2pm225 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm208 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm194 flights52.2%
- 8pm–5am92 flights71.8%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.2% on time, against 79.7% 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 225 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to CHS through the year
December is the weak month at 50.6% on time, against 88.2% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 95 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.5%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 22,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,773 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 4.35%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.5% 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 67.9% on time across 874 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. 873 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 CHS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.35% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 834 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to CHS, every carrier
- PSA on CHS to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to CHS80.7%
- American Airlines on DCA to CHS65.0%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.