Carrier route record
OHDCA→CLT
PSA Airlines · Washington to Charlotte
- Flights
- 234
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to CLT draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 234 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 CLT runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 114 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 232 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.5%
Every carrier on DCA to CLT, 2,677 flights
These figures cover 234 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on DCA to CLT
PSA flew 234 of the 2,677 flights on DCA to CLT, about 9% of it. Its 65.9% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.8% to PSA at 65.9%.
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 | 2,443 | 79.8% | 124 min | 3.19% | B− |
| PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample | 234 | 65.9% | 88 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 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 234 flights.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm161 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm53 flights67.9%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 67.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to CLT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202560 flights70.0%
- Oct–Dec 202565 flights75.4%
- Apr–Jun 202650 flights58.0%
- Jul–Sep 202659 flights57.9%
Scale runs 50% to 80%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.9% on time across 234 flights.
PSA on DCA to CLT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 75.4% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 57.9%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 59 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 53.3%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to CLT runs when it is late
The 79 late arrivals split 21 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early54 flights23.3%
- Within 15 min99 flights42.7%
- 15–29 min late21 flights9.1%
- 30–59 min late21 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights8.2%
- 2+ hours late18 flights7.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 232 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
13 of 81 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on DCA to CLT
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 August 2026, 7 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 August 2026 | 7 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 June 2026 | 6 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 August 2026 | 5 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 August 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 September 2025 | 4 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 6,926 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,926 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 6,926 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,375 of the 6,926 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
15.9% 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 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 238 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 234 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 CLT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 234 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 65.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 232 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to CLT, every carrier
- PSA on CLT to DCA, the return leg
- American Airlines on DCA to CLT79.8%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.