Route reliability record
DCA→PHL
Washington to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 819
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 120 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.3% 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 C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 819 DCA to PHL flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly DCA to PHL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.6% of the time and Saturday flights 70.1%, against 65.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 126 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 792 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
58.5% on time across 601 flights
These figures cover 819 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.0% 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 PHL
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 Airwaysthin sample | 218 | 82.7% | 44 min | 1.83% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 601 | 58.5% | 88 min | 3.83% | D− |
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 48 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–8am118 flights96.6%
- 8am–11am3 flights—
- 11am–2pm254 flights72.9%
- 2pm–5pm290 flights48.2%
- 5pm–8pm119 flights55.3%
- 8pm–5am35 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.6% of the time, against 48.2% for the afternoon window. That is 48 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 290 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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 48.3% on time, against 83.9% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 70.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 56.0%. 14 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 56% of the 23,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 22,726 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 3.30%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.0% 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 120 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 60.3% on time across 817 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. 819 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 PHL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.30% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 792 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to PHL questions
How often is DCA to PHL 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 35.0% of the 819 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is DCA to PHL compared with the rest of the country?
65.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to PHL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 48.2%, 48 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 PHL?
December is the weakest month at 48.3% on time, compared with 83.9% in September. Across the year that is 36 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
- PHL to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on DCA to PHL82.7%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to PHL58.5%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record58.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to PHL and PHL 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.