Carrier route record
AADCA→PIT
American Airlines · Washington to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 100
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DCA to PIT draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 100 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DCA to PIT runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 96 completed flights
Avg delay
107 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.2%
Every carrier on DCA to PIT, 1,431 flights
These figures cover 100 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.8% 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
American against every carrier on DCA to PIT
American flew 100 of the 1,431 flights on DCA to PIT, about 7% of it. Its 65.6% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.0% to American at 65.6%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 196 | 88.0% | 43 min | 2.55% | A |
| Republic Airways | 773 | 74.1% | 57 min | 3.88% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 362 | 73.2% | 67 min | 6.08% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 100 | 65.6% | 107 min | 4.00% | C− |
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 42 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–11am33 flights93.9%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm66 flights51.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.6% 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 66 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DCA to PIT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202554 flights72.0%
- Oct–Dec 20254 flights—
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202635 flights54.3%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. 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 65.6% on time across 100 flights.
Split by quarter, American on DCA to PIT logged 54 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 4 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 35 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 65.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 3,531 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Extreme weather
- 20%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 21% 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 3.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,531 reported delay minutes.
49% 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 3,531 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 4.00%, 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. 19.8% 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 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 62.5% on time across 100 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 100 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: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.00% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 96 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 PIT88.0%
- Republic Airways on DCA to PIT74.1%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to PIT73.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) 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.