Route reliability record
DCA→CLE
Washington to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,608
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 310 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 1,608 DCA to CLE flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DCA to CLE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 71.5%, against 67.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 105 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,486 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
64.4% on time across 1,433 flights
These figures cover 1,608 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% 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 CLE
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 Airwaysthin sample | 19 | 88.9% | 19 min | 5.26% | A− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 149 | 87.7% | 33 min | 2.01% | A |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 85.7% | 18 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,433 | 64.4% | 79 min | 8.03% | D− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Cleveland
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 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → CLEWashington to Cleveland | United Airlines | 84.2% | 84.7% | 0.56% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. BWI → CLEBaltimore to Cleveland | Southwest Airlines | 75.3% | 76.9% | 2.06% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → CLEWashington to Cleveland | PSA Airlines | 59.2% | 64.4% | 8.03% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am167 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am301 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm251 flights68.7%
- 2pm–5pm243 flights59.0%
- 5pm–8pm330 flights49.8%
- 8pm–5am316 flights58.4%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 49.8% on time, against 92.6% for the 5am–8am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 330 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 59.3% on time, against 82.8% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 71.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.0%. 14 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 53% of the 38,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%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 38,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 37,522 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.6% on time here.
Cancellations run at 7.40%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 13.8% 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 310 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 65.6% on time across 1,609 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,608 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 CLE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.40% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,486 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to CLE questions
How often is DCA to CLE delayed?
About 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 32.9% of the 1,608 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DCA to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
67.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 11 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to CLE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 49.8%, 43 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 CLE?
December is the weakest month at 59.3% on time, compared with 82.8% in September. Across the year that is 24 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
- CLE to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DCA to CLE87.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to CLE64.4%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record88.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.7%
- American Airlines on-time record85.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to CLE and CLE 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.