Carrier route record
OHDCA→CLE
PSA Airlines · Washington to Cleveland
- Flights
- 1,402
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 87%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to CLE carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 8.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,402 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on DCA to CLE runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 154 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,274 completed flights
Avg delay
81 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
65.6%
Every carrier on DCA to CLE, 1,604 flights
These figures cover 1,402 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on DCA to CLE
PSA flew 1,402 of the 1,604 flights on DCA to CLE, most of the route. Its 61.9% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 93.3% to PSA at 61.9%. Three 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 Airwaysthin sample | 46 | 93.3% | 22 min | 2.17% | 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 (this page) | 1,402 | 61.9% | 81 min | 8.84% | 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 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 44 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am137 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am165 flights79.3%
- 11am–2pm236 flights66.8%
- 2pm–5pm251 flights56.2%
- 5pm–8pm312 flights46.9%
- 8pm–5am301 flights54.4%
Scale runs 40% to 95%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 46.9% on time, against 90.8% 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 312 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to CLE through the year
July is the worst month at 45.0% on time, 37 points below September, the best at 82.4%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 70.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 49.1%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to CLE runs when it is late
The 485 late arrivals split 131 under half an hour, 129 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 225 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early246 flights19.3%
- Within 15 min543 flights42.6%
- 15–29 min late131 flights10.3%
- 30–59 min late129 flights10.1%
- 1–2 hours late141 flights11.1%
- 2+ hours late84 flights6.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,274 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 448 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 42 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 79 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at CLE.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on DCA to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 30 April 2026, 17 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 30 April 2026 | 17 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 June 2026 | 12 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 3 December 2025 | 10 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 April 2026 | 10 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 March 2026 | 9 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 39,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
51% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 39,328 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 90.8% on time here.
Cancellations run at 8.84%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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
17.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 64.0% on time across 1,403 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 1,402 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.
What to do with this
Booking PSA on DCA to CLE
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.84% 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. 1,274 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to CLE, every carrier
- PSA on CLE to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to CLE87.7%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.