Carrier route record
OHDCA→DTW
PSA Airlines · Washington to Detroit
- Flights
- 957
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 6.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 957 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to DTW runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 81 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 894 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on DCA to DTW, 2,979 flights
These figures cover 957 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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
PSA against every carrier on DCA to DTW
PSA flew 957 of the 2,979 flights on DCA to DTW, about 32% of it. Its 69.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to PSA at 69.5%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 271 | 81.2% | 72 min | 3.32% | B− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,745 | 79.6% | 88 min | 2.46% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 396 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 957 | 69.5% | 85 min | 6.37% | C− |
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 31 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–8am194 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am120 flights80.7%
- 11am–2pm89 flights65.9%
- 2pm–5pm178 flights67.6%
- 5pm–8pm89 flights58.5%
- 8pm–5am287 flights57.3%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 88.0% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 287 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to DTW through the year
December is the weak month at 59.4% on time, against 83.9% 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. November was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.0%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 23,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 23,145 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 88.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.37%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.8% 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 405 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 69.6% on time across 956 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 957 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 DTW
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.37% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 894 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to DTW, every carrier
- PSA on DTW to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to DTW81.2%
- Delta Air Lines on DCA to DTW79.6%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) 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.