Route reliability record
DCA→HSV
Washington to Huntsville
- Flights
- 1,321
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 613 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% 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 1,321 DCA to HSV flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DCA to HSV: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.2% of the time and Saturday flights 78.8%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,253 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
70.4% on time across 999 flights
These figures cover 1,321 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.7% 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 HSV
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 | 58 | 84.2% | 32 min | 1.72% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 264 | 75.6% | 82 min | 5.30% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 999 | 70.4% | 78 min | 5.11% | 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 23 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–8am—
- 8am–11am352 flights85.2%
- 11am–2pm309 flights71.6%
- 2pm–5pm241 flights65.1%
- 5pm–8pm128 flights62.1%
- 8pm–5am291 flights66.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 85.2% for the 8am–11am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 352 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 57.1% on time, against 84.1% in October. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 67.7%. 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 56% of the 27,000 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
- 26%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 27,025 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty 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. 11.7% 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.
The 613 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 71.0% on time across 1,324 flights, within about a point 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 1,321 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 HSV after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,253 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to HSV questions
How often is DCA to HSV delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 1,321 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 HSV compared with the rest of the country?
72.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 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 HSV?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 85.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 62.1%, 23 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 HSV?
December is the weakest month at 57.1% on time, compared with 84.1% in October. Across the year that is 27 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
- HSV to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DCA to HSV75.6%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to HSV70.4%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ATL to HSV, a related route84.4%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record84.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to HSV and HSV to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DCA to HSV’s on-time badge on your site
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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.