Route reliability record
DCA→CLT
Washington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,677
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 331 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,677 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,594 completed flights
Avg delay
113 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.95%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.0% on time across 2,382 flights
These figures cover 2,677 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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 CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 2,382 | 80.0% | 120 min | 3.02% | B− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 295 | 66.7% | 82 min | 2.37% | C |
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am701 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am564 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm518 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm174 flights71.2%
- 5pm–8pm665 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am55 flights63.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 90.9% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 701 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
July is the worst month at 68.5% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 86.8%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.6%. 11 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 63,000 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
- 29%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%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 63,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 63,133 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 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.95%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 9.8% 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 331 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.7% on time across 2,684 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,677 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 this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.95% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 2,594 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to CLT questions
How often is DCA to CLT delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.5% of the 2,677 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DCA to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
78.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.6%, 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 July delays on DCA to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 68.5% on time, compared with 86.8% in April. Across the year that is 18 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
- CLT to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record80.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record66.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. DCA to CLT and CLT to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.