Carrier route record
OHDCA→MSN
PSA Airlines · Washington to Madison
- Flights
- 859
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 69%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to MSN carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 7.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 859 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on DCA to MSN runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 792 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.45%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.4%
Every carrier on DCA to MSN, 1,238 flights
These figures cover 859 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on DCA to MSN
PSA flew 859 of the 1,238 flights on DCA to MSN, most of the route. Its 66.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 76.0% to Envoy at 0.0%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 375 | 76.0% | 82 min | 2.40% | B |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 859 | 66.5% | 88 min | 7.45% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 33.3% | 33 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 22 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am176 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm109 flights82.1%
- 2pm–5pm247 flights65.3%
- 5pm–8pm15 flights—
- 8pm–5am312 flights57.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.0% on time, against 82.1% for the 11am–2pm 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 312 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to MSN through the year
July is the worst month at 48.1% on time, 37 points below October, the best at 84.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 74.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on DCA to MSN runs when it is late
PSA on DCA to MSN often beats the schedule: 210 of 792 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 265 late arrivals split 72 under half an hour, 71 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 122 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early210 flights26.5%
- Within 15 min317 flights40.0%
- 15–29 min late72 flights9.1%
- 30–59 min late71 flights9.0%
- 1–2 hours late56 flights7.1%
- 2+ hours late66 flights8.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 792 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
30 of 249 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 12% of them. In the other direction, 46 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 MSN.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on DCA to MSN
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 March 2026, 21 hours 16 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 March 2026 | 21 hours 16 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 June 2026 | 9 hours 40 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 July 2026 | 7 hours 38 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 June 2026 | 7 hours 36 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 9 December 2025 | 7 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 23,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 23,227 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 7.45%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twelve 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
15.4% 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 707 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.4% on time across 858 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 859 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 MSN
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.45% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 792 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.