Route reliability record
DCA→ORF
Washington to Norfolk
- Flights
- 1,042
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 142 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 1,042 DCA to ORF flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly DCA to ORF: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 69.7% of the time and Saturday flights 79.5%, against 63.9% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 137 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 994 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
63.3% on time across 1,014 flights
These figures cover 1,042 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.1% 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
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to ORF
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 24 | 82.6% | 76 min | 4.17% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 1,014 | 63.3% | 75 min | 4.64% | D− |
Flight by flight
Flights on DCA to ORF
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Norfolk
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BWI → ORFBaltimore to Norfolk | Southwest Airlines | 77.7% | 78.6% | 1.17% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. DCA → ORFWashington to Norfolk | PSA Airlines | 60.4% | 63.3% | 4.64% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | OH 5662 22:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am341 flights69.7%
- 11am–2pm188 flights64.5%
- 2pm–5pm45 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm113 flights59.1%
- 8pm–5am355 flights59.2%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.1% on time, against 69.7% for the 8am–11am 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 355 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 49.2% on time, against 73.6% in September. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 53.9%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 27,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 9%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 26,759 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 69.7% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.61%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.1% 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.
At 142 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.2% on time across 1,041 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,042 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in ORF after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.61% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 994 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to ORF questions
How often is DCA to ORF delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 36.1% of the 1,042 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DCA to ORF compared with the rest of the country?
63.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 14 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to ORF?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 69.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 59.1%, 11 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on DCA to ORF?
December is the weakest month at 49.2% on time, compared with 73.6% in September. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ORF to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ATL to ORF, a related route79.0%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.6%
- PSA Airlines on-time record63.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to ORF and ORF to DCA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.