Carrier route record

OHDCA→IAH

PSA Airlines · Washington to Houston

Flights: 276
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on DCA to IAH sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 276 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,413 at 83.8% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to IAH runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 75 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 254 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.4%

Every carrier on DCA to IAH, 3,200 flights

These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% 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 IAH

PSA flew 276 of the 3,200 flights on DCA to IAH, about 9% of it. Its 70.1% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.8% to PSA at 70.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 83.8% of the time; Republic Airways manages 75.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 511 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to IAH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	2,413	83.8%	95 min	0.91%	B+
Republic Airways	511	75.7%	56 min	5.09%	B−
PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample	276	70.1%	73 min	5.43%	C−

Republic Airways cancels 5.1% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 20 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am110 flights78.1%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm46 flights75.0%
2pm–5pm43 flights64.3%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am77 flights58.2%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 78.1% 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 110 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on DCA to IAH through the year

Oct–Dec 20253 flights—
Jan–Mar 202640 flights85.7%
Apr–Jun 2026233 flights68.1%

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.1% on time across 276 flights.

Split by quarter, PSA on DCA to IAH logged 3 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 40 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 233 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 61.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 5,548 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
31%
Carrier
18%
Extreme weather
13%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,548 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 5,548 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.

Cancellations run at 5.43%, 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.4% 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 1,208 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 69.0% on time across 276 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 276 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 IAH

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.43% 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. 254 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures