Carrier route record
OHDCA→RDU
PSA Airlines · Washington to Raleigh
- Flights
- 840
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- 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 RDU carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three 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 840 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 448 at 74.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on DCA to RDU runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 108 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 796 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.3%
Every carrier on DCA to RDU, 1,990 flights
These figures cover 840 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.6% 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 RDU
PSA flew 840 of the 1,990 flights on DCA to RDU, about 42% of it. Its 66.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 74.2% to American at 65.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Air | 448 | 74.2% | 74 min | 4.02% | C− |
| Republic Airways | 495 | 70.8% | 70 min | 6.46% | C− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 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.
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 41 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am62 flights87.9%
- 8am–11am194 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm175 flights69.5%
- 2pm–5pm184 flights57.2%
- 5pm–8pm108 flights56.0%
- 8pm–5am117 flights46.7%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 46.7% on time, against 87.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 194 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on DCA to RDU through the year
February is the weak month at 57.5% on time, against 75.3% in August. 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 141 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 74.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 58.9%. 16 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 57% of the 17,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
57% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 16,911 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 87.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 5.12%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.6% 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 60.5% on time across 838 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 840 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.12% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 796 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to RDU, every carrier
- PSA on RDU to DCA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on DCA to RDU74.2%
- Republic Airways on DCA to RDU70.8%
- American Airlines on DCA to RDU65.2%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.