Carrier route record
YXDCA→CHS
Republic Airways · Washington to Charleston
- Flights
- 375
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- 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 CHS lands a B−, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 375 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 873 at 68.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on DCA to CHS from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.2%
Every carrier on DCA to CHS, 1,755 flights
These figures cover 375 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 CHS
Republic flew 375 of the 1,755 flights on DCA to CHS, about 21% of it. Its 80.7% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 70.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways (this page) | 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.
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 375 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am70 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm138 flights81.3%
- 2pm–5pm96 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am71 flights81.8%
Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The time of day barely matters here. The 8pm–5am window tops the set at 81.8% and 2pm–5pm sits at 78.7%, 3 points apart across 375 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 138 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DCA to CHS through the year
July is the worst month at 69.7% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 89.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 82 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 96.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.9%. 28 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 53% of the 4,849 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
53% 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 4,849 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 4,849 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, 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 costs
7.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.4% on time across 375 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 375 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 CHS
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to CHS, every carrier
- Republic on CHS to DCA, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on DCA to CHS68.6%
- American Airlines on DCA to CHS65.0%
- Republic Airways 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.