Carrier route record
YXDCA→STL
Republic Airways · Washington to St. Louis
- Flights
- 200
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DCA to STL lands a B−, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 200 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,403 at 75.7% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Republic on DCA to STL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 193 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.6%
Every carrier on DCA to STL, 2,414 flights
These figures cover 200 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on DCA to STL
Republic flew 200 of the 2,414 flights on DCA to STL, about 8% of it. Its 79.8% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 90.5% to PSA at 67.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 75.7% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 615 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 21 | 90.5% | 39 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Republic Airways (this page)thin sample | 200 | 79.8% | 61 min | 3.50% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,403 | 75.7% | 66 min | 1.21% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 175 | 68.4% | 95 min | 2.29% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 615 | 67.4% | 82 min | 4.88% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 4.9% 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 Republic runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am37 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am51 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm61 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am46 flights75.0%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 75.0% on time against 90.9% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 61 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DCA to STL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202520 flights—
- Oct–Dec 2025119 flights75.4%
- Jan–Mar 202661 flights83.6%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 79.8% on time across 200 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on DCA to STL logged 20 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 119 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 61 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.9%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,361 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 5%Security
- 2%Extreme weather
40% 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 2,361 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 2,361 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 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.50%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 719 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 77.1% on time across 199 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 200 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 Republic on DCA to STL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.50% 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. 193 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to STL, every carrier
- Republic on STL to DCA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on DCA to STL75.7%
- American Airlines on DCA to STL68.4%
- PSA Airlines on DCA to STL67.4%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) 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.