Carrier route record
YXDTW→DCA
Republic Airways · Detroit to Washington
- Flights
- 271
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DTW to DCA draws a D−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 271 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 956 at 69.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on DTW to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 134 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 257 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
68.6%
Every carrier on DTW to DCA, 2,978 flights
These figures cover 271 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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
Republic against every carrier on DTW to DCA
Republic flew 271 of the 2,978 flights on DTW to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 64.2% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 68.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to American at 25.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 956 | 69.6% | 123 min | 6.49% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,745 | 68.8% | 62 min | 2.29% | C |
| Republic Airways (this page)thin sample | 271 | 64.2% | 69 min | 4.80% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 25.0% | 207 min | 0.00% | F+ |
PSA Airlines 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 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 47 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am42 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm46 flights76.1%
- 2pm–5pm92 flights59.6%
- 5pm–8pm67 flights42.6%
- 8pm–5am20 flights—
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 42.6% on time, against 89.7% 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 92 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on DTW to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202540 flights87.5%
- Oct–Dec 202528 flights—
- Jan–Mar 2026111 flights49.0%
- Apr–Jun 202692 flights67.4%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. 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 64.2% on time across 271 flights.
Republic on DTW to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 87.5% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 49.0%, a swing of 39 points on roughly 90 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 52.3%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 6,322 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%National Airspace System
- 11%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
44% 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 6,322 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 6,322 reported delay minutes.
40% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,532 minutes out of 6,322, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.80%, 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. 14.4% 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 405 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 81.2% on time across 271 flights, 17 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 17 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 271 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 DTW to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.80% 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. 257 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to DCA, every carrier
- Republic on DCA to DTW, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on DTW to DCA69.6%
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to DCA68.8%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) 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.