Carrier route record
OHDCA→IAH
PSA Airlines · Washington to Houston
- Flights
- 438
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to IAH 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 438 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,384 at 83.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on DCA to IAH runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 107 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 395 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on DCA to IAH, 3,333 flights
These figures cover 438 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 IAH
PSA flew 438 of the 3,333 flights on DCA to IAH, about 13% of it. Its 66.6% on time is 14 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to PSA at 66.6%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 83.5% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,384 | 83.5% | 85 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 511 | 75.7% | 56 min | 5.09% | B− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 438 | 66.6% | 83 min | 7.31% | 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.
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am112 flights78.5%
- 8am–11am46 flights69.8%
- 11am–2pm66 flights71.2%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am130 flights54.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 54.1% on time, against 78.5% 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 130 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%
- Jul–Sep 2026162 flights60.3%
Scale runs 50% 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 66.6% on time across 438 flights.
PSA on DCA to IAH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.7% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 60.3%, a swing of 25 points on roughly 146 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 75.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 51.9%, a spread of 24 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to IAH runs when it is late
PSA on DCA to IAH often beats the schedule: 133 of 395 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 132 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 38 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 62 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early133 flights33.7%
- Within 15 min130 flights32.9%
- 15–29 min late32 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late38 flights9.6%
- 1–2 hours late35 flights8.9%
- 2+ hours late27 flights6.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 395 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 135 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 29 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at IAH.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on DCA to IAH
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 August 2026, 6 hours 52 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. Three of the five worst days fell in August 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 August 2026 | 6 hours 52 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 10 August 2026 | 6 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 5 hours 6 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 15 June 2026 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 July 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 19%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 19% 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 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,900 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 7.31%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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
15.7% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 66.3% on time across 439 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. 438 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 7.31% 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. 395 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to IAH, every carrier
- PSA on IAH to DCA, the return leg
- United Airlines on DCA to IAH83.5%
- Republic Airways on DCA to IAH75.7%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.