Route reliability record
DCA→PWM
Washington to Portland
- Flights
- 1,153
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 482 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.9% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,153 DCA to PWM flights, of which American Airlines flew 655 at 69.9% on time.
Best time to fly DCA to PWM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 77.2% of the time and Saturday flights 77.6%, against 68.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 88 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,105 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
69.9% on time across 655 flights
These figures cover 1,153 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.2% 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 PWM
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 655 | 69.9% | 69 min | 2.29% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 100 | 68.2% | 63 min | 12.00% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 394 | 66.7% | 63 min | 4.57% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.6% 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Washington to Portland
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. 2 of the top 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → PWMWashington to Portland | Republic Airways | 85.8% | 87.9% | 2.37% | 8am–11am, Sat (route) | — |
| 2. BWI → PWMBaltimore to Portland | Southwest Airlines | 78.1% | 79.2% | 1.34% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. DCA → PWMWashington to Portland | American Airlines | 68.3% | 69.9% | 2.29% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 4. DCA → PWMWashington to Portland | PSA Airlines | 63.7% | 66.7% | 4.57% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 18 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am8 flights—
- 8am–11am361 flights77.2%
- 11am–2pm89 flights64.8%
- 2pm–5pm358 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm6 flights—
- 8pm–5am331 flights59.3%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.3% on time, against 77.2% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
February is the weak month at 55.8% on time, against 83.7% in November. 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 121 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 63.4%. 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 58% 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
58% 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 21 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 22,903 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 77.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.90%, 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.2% 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 482 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 74.5% on time across 1,153 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,153 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PWM after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.90% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,105 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to PWM questions
How often is DCA to PWM 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 31.2% of the 1,153 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to PWM?
American Airlines leads at 69.9% on time across 655 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 66.7%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DCA to PWM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 77.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.3%, 18 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 February delays on DCA to PWM?
February is the weakest month at 55.8% on time, compared with 83.7% in November. Across the year that is 28 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
- PWM to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- American Airlines on DCA to PWM69.9%
- Republic Airways on DCA to PWM68.2%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to PWM66.7%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ORD to PWM, a related route74.0%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record69.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record68.2%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to PWM and PWM 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.