Carrier route record
OHDCA→MSY
PSA Airlines · Washington to New Orleans
- Flights
- 558
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 29%
- 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 MSY 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 a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 558 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 457 at 73.5% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to MSY runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 529 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.7%
Every carrier on DCA to MSY, 1,951 flights
These figures cover 558 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% 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 MSY
PSA flew 558 of the 1,951 flights on DCA to MSY, about 29% of it. Its 72.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.0% to PSA at 72.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 230 | 83.0% | 37 min | 0.43% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 457 | 73.5% | 82 min | 3.06% | C− |
| Southwest Airlines | 706 | 72.1% | 58 min | 1.84% | C |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 558 | 72.0% | 72 min | 4.48% | C− |
American Airlines cancels 3.1% 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.
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 20 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am60 flights83.0%
- 8am–11am85 flights72.6%
- 11am–2pm228 flights73.3%
- 2pm–5pm89 flights63.1%
- 5pm–8pm5 flights—
- 8pm–5am91 flights70.1%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.0% of the time, against 63.1% for the afternoon window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 228 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to MSY through the year
December is the weak month at 57.1% on time, against 85.7% in March. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 72 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 81.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 63.6%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 11,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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. The split is drawn from 10,615 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 83.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.48%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 11.9% 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 969 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 67.4% on time across 558 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 558 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 MSY
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.48% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 529 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to MSY, every carrier
- PSA on MSY to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to MSY83.0%
- American Airlines on DCA to MSY73.5%
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to MSY72.1%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Louis Armstrong New Orleans International (MSY) 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.