Carrier route record
OHDCA→IND
PSA Airlines · Washington to Indianapolis
- Flights
- 192
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to IND lands a B−, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 192 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate PSA on DCA to IND from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 184 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.1%
Every carrier on DCA to IND, 2,027 flights
These figures cover 192 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 IND
PSA flew 192 of the 2,027 flights on DCA to IND, about 9% of it. Its 76.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 77.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 80.0% to PSA at 76.1%. Two 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 | 5 | 80.0% | 27 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 28 | 77.8% | 26 min | 3.57% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 1,802 | 77.2% | 66 min | 3.83% | B− |
| PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample | 192 | 76.1% | 107 min | 4.17% | B− |
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 192 flights.
- 5am–8am9 flights—
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm115 flights73.0%
- 2pm–5pm65 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 73.0% on time against 78.1% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 115 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to IND through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025120 flights74.6%
- Oct–Dec 202517 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202611 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202644 flights73.8%
Scale runs 65% to 80%. 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 76.1% on time across 192 flights.
Split by quarter, PSA on DCA to IND logged 120 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 17 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 11 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 44 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 76.1% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 4,709 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 19%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,709 reported delay minutes.
51% 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 4,709 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 4.17%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 12.0% 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 500 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.1% on time across 192 flights, 9 points below 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 192 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 IND
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 184 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to IND, every carrier
- PSA on IND to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to IND77.2%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Indianapolis International (IND) 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.