Carrier route record

YXDCA→MSY

Republic Airways · Washington to New Orleans

Flights: 230
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.

Republic on DCA to MSY lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 35 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 230 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 457 at 73.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's DCA to MSY record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 229 completed flights

Avg delay

37 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.7%

Every carrier on DCA to MSY, 1,951 flights

These figures cover 230 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on DCA to MSY

Republic flew 230 of the 1,951 flights on DCA to MSY, about 12% of it. Its 83.0% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.0% to PSA at 72.0%.

The three carriers here are closely matched: 2 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to MSY
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways (this page)thin 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	558	72.0%	72 min	4.48%	C−

PSA Airlines cancels 4.5% 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 Republic runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am48 flights89.4%
8am–11am65 flights87.7%
11am–2pm47 flights78.7%
2pm–5pm57 flights75.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am13 flights—

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 75.4% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 65 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on DCA to MSY through the year

Jul–Sep 202586 flights89.4%
Oct–Dec 202547 flights78.7%
Jan–Mar 202622 flights—
Apr–Jun 202675 flights78.7%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 83.0% on time across 230 flights.

Republic on DCA to MSY did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 89.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 78.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 77 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 93.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.0%. 24 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,447 reported delay minutes.

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 524 of the 1,447 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,447 reported delay minutes.

38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 543 minutes out of 1,447, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.43%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

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 runs 82.6% on time across 230 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 230 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 Republic on DCA to MSY

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 230 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 229 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures