Carrier route record
MQDCA→MCI
Envoy Air · Washington to Kansas City
- Flights
- 168
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on DCA to MCI sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 168 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 999 at 72.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on DCA to MCI runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 162 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
71.7%
Every carrier on DCA to MCI, 1,927 flights
These figures cover 168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% 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
Envoy against every carrier on DCA to MCI
Envoy flew 168 of the 1,927 flights on DCA to MCI, about 9% of it. Its 71.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 71.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 84.0% to PSA at 68.2%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 25 | 84.0% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 152 | 75.5% | 44 min | 0.66% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 999 | 72.7% | 65 min | 1.80% | C |
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 168 | 71.6% | 64 min | 3.57% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 583 | 68.2% | 69 min | 6.17% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 6.2% 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 Envoy 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 168 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's DCA to MCI record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 71.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on DCA to MCI through the year
- Jul–Sep 202527 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202541 flights76.9%
- Jan–Mar 202664 flights63.9%
- Apr–Jun 202636 flights75.0%
Scale runs 55% 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 71.6% on time across 168 flights.
Envoy on DCA to MCI did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.9% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 63.9%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 56 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.0%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 2,941 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
- 19%National Airspace System
- 14%Extreme weather
- 10%Carrier
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,941 reported delay minutes.
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 2,941 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 3.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 10.5% 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 949 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 90.2% on time across 168 flights, 19 points above 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 19 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 168 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 Envoy on DCA to MCI
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.57% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 162 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to MCI, every carrier
- Envoy on MCI to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to MCI75.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to MCI72.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to MCI68.2%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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.