Carrier route record
OHDCA→PHL
PSA Airlines · Washington to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 601
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on DCA to PHL draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 601 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to PHL runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 191 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 578 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.0%
Every carrier on DCA to PHL, 819 flights
These figures cover 601 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% 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 PHL
PSA flew 601 of the 819 flights on DCA to PHL, most of the route. Its 58.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.7% to PSA at 58.5%. One 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 Airwaysthin sample | 218 | 82.7% | 44 min | 1.83% | B |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 601 | 58.5% | 88 min | 3.83% | D− |
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. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am2 flights—
- 11am–2pm197 flights73.7%
- 2pm–5pm280 flights48.5%
- 5pm–8pm92 flights53.3%
- 8pm–5am30 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 73.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 48.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 280 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to PHL through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 77.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 63.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 48.8%. 14 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 57% of the 21,000 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
- 20%Carrier
- 12%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,086 reported delay minutes.
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 21,000 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 3.83%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 17.6% 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 58.3% on time across 600 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. 601 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 PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.83% 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. 578 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to PHL, every carrier
- PSA on PHL to DCA, the return leg
- Republic Airways on DCA to PHL82.7%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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.