Carrier route record
AADCA→LAS
American Airlines · Washington to Las Vegas
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to LAS earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's DCA to LAS record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.2%
Every carrier on DCA to LAS, 729 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on DCA to LAS
American flew 364 of the 729 flights on DCA to LAS, about 50% of it. Its 88.8% on time is 20 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 88.8% to Southwest at 49.4%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 88.8% | 72 min | 1.37% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 49.4% | 62 min | 1.64% | F |
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Departure window
When American 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 364 flights.
- 5am–8am201 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am163 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
American on DCA to LAS through the year
July is the worst month at 80.0% on time, 17 points below April, the best at 96.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DCA to LAS runs when it is late
American on DCA to LAS often beats the schedule: 174 of 358 completed flights, 49%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 40 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early174 flights48.6%
- Within 15 min144 flights40.2%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.4%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.0%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 32 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 10 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 18 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 LAS.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DCA to LAS
The latest arrival of the period was on 31 August 2026, 10 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 31 August 2026 | 10 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 August 2026 | 4 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 November 2025 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 November 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 May 2026 | 2 hours 38 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 75% of the 2,886 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 75%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 2%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,158 of the 2,886 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,886 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,089 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.9% on time across 364 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 American on DCA to LAS
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 88.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 358 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to LAS, every carrier
- American on LAS to DCA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to LAS49.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.