Route reliability record
DCA→RDU
Washington to Raleigh
- Flights
- 1,990
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 227 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.0% 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 1,990 DCA to RDU flights, of which Envoy Air flew 448 at 74.2% on time.
Best time to fly DCA to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Saturday flights 75.3%, against 69.3% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 74.2% on time across 448 flights.
Key figures
On time
69.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,890 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
74.2% on time across 448 flights
These figures cover 1,990 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.2% 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 RDU
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 74.2% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 66.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 840 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 448 | 74.2% | 74 min | 4.02% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 495 | 70.8% | 70 min | 6.46% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 840 | 66.8% | 64 min | 5.12% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 207 | 65.2% | 74 min | 2.90% | C |
Republic Airways cancels 6.5% 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 Raleigh
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 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAD → RDUWashington to Raleigh | United Airlines | 84.2% | 85.1% | 1.11% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. BWI → RDUBaltimore to Raleigh | Southwest Airlines | 78.9% | 80.8% | 2.40% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
| 3. DCA → RDUWashington to Raleigh | Envoy Air | 71.2% | 74.2% | 4.02% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 4. DCA → RDUWashington to Raleigh | Republic Airways | 66.2% | 70.8% | 6.46% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 5. DCA → RDUWashington to Raleigh | PSA Airlines | 63.4% | 66.8% | 5.12% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
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 30 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am67 flights88.5%
- 8am–11am275 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm459 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm509 flights63.4%
- 5pm–8pm347 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am333 flights58.2%
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 58.2% on time, against 88.5% for the 5am–8am 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 509 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,990 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 65.0% on time, against 75.8% in April. 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 178 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 62.3%. 13 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 61% of the 40,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 40,000 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 39,817 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.97%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.2% 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 227 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.3% on time across 1,989 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,990 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 RDU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.97% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 1,890 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DCA to RDU questions
How often is DCA to RDU delayed?
Roughly 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 30.7% of the 1,990 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DCA to RDU?
Envoy Air leads at 74.2% on time across 448 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 66.8%, a gap of 7 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 RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 58.2%, 30 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 December delays on DCA to RDU?
December is the weakest month at 65.0% on time, compared with 75.8% in April. Across the year that is 11 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
- RDU to DCA — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on DCA to RDU74.2%
- Republic Airways on DCA to RDU70.8%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to RDU66.8%
- American Airlines on DCA to RDU65.2%
- DCA to BOS, a related route71.4%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.4%
- DCA to ORD, a related route74.3%
- Envoy Air on-time record74.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record70.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record66.8%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DCA to RDU and RDU 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.