Carrier route record

OHDCA→PWM

PSA Airlines · Washington to Portland

Flights: 394
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 34%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on DCA to PWM draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 394 flights, with a median arrival right on schedule.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to PWM runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.

On time

66.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 375 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.57%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

68.8%

Every carrier on DCA to PWM, 1,153 flights

These figures cover 394 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 PWM

PSA flew 394 of the 1,153 flights on DCA to PWM, about 34% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to PSA at 66.7%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DCA to PWM
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 (this page)	394	66.7%	63 min	4.57%	C−

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 37 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–8am8 flights—
8am–11am110 flights78.2%
11am–2pm79 flights67.9%
2pm–5pm135 flights67.2%
5pm–8pm2 flights—
8pm–5am60 flights41.1%

Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.1% on time, against 78.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 135 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on DCA to PWM through the year

Jul–Sep 202576 flights78.7%
Oct–Dec 202548 flights60.9%
Jan–Mar 2026106 flights63.3%
Apr–Jun 2026164 flights64.7%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 66.7% on time across 394 flights.

PSA on DCA to PWM did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.7% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 60.9%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 99 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.6%. 17 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 47% of the 7,853 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
14%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

47% 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 7,853 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 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 7,853 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,814 of the 7,853 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 4.57%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 10.4% 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 70.1% on time across 394 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 394 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 PWM

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.57% 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. 375 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures