Carrier route record
AADCA→PIT
American Airlines · Washington to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 123
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to PIT earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.0% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 123 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 371 at 75.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on DCA to PIT runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 203 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
57.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 121 completed flights
Avg delay
94 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on DCA to PIT, 1,413 flights
These figures cover 123 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 22.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on DCA to PIT
American flew 123 of the 1,413 flights on DCA to PIT, about 9% of it. Its 57.0% on time is 16 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 87.3% to American at 57.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 170 | 87.3% | 44 min | 2.94% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 371 | 75.1% | 67 min | 6.74% | B− |
| Republic Airways | 749 | 70.9% | 61 min | 3.87% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 123 | 57.0% | 94 min | 1.63% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 6.7% 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 51 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am33 flights93.9%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm3 flights—
- 5pm–8pm86 flights42.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.9% on time, against 93.9% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 86 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DCA to PIT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202524 flights—
- Oct–Dec 20254 flights—
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202635 flights54.3%
- Jul–Sep 202653 flights35.3%
Scale runs 25% to 60%. 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 57.0% on time across 123 flights.
Split by quarter, American on DCA to PIT logged 24 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 4 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 35 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 53 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 57.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on DCA to PIT runs when it is late
American on DCA to PIT often beats the schedule: 39 of 121 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When American on DCA to PIT is late it tends to be very late: 27 of its 52 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 16 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early39 flights32.2%
- Within 15 min30 flights24.8%
- 15–29 min late16 flights13.2%
- 30–59 min late9 flights7.4%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights9.1%
- 2+ hours late16 flights13.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 121 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 55 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 6 made it up before arrival. 3 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on DCA to PIT
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 June 2026, 5 hours 18 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Four of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 June 2026 | 5 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 June 2026 | 4 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 12 June 2026 | 3 hours 53 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 4,864 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,864 reported delay minutes.
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,864 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one.
Cancellations sit at 1.63% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
22.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 204 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 runs 57.0% on time across 123 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. 123 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 American on DCA to PIT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 123 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 57.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 121 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to PIT, every carrier
- American on PIT to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to PIT87.3%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to PIT75.1%
- Republic Airways on DCA to PIT70.9%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.