Route reliability record
HOU→DCA
Houston to Washington
- Flights
- 1,052
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,218 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,052 HOU to DCA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly HOU to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 73.5%, against 68.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 90 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
68.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,022 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.81%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
68.3% on time across 1,052 flights
These figures cover 1,052 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HOU to DCA
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,052 | 68.3% | 54 min | 1.81% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Houston to Washington
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. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. IAH → IADHouston to Washington | United Airlines | 82.0% | 82.4% | 0.43% | 5am–8am, Mon | UA 1549 07:20 |
| 2. IAH → BWIHouston to Baltimore | United Airlines | 80.8% | 81.3% | 0.60% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. IAH → DCAHouston to Washington | United Airlines | 76.2% | 76.7% | 0.67% | 5am–8am, Tue | UA 654 12:00 |
| 4. HOU → BWIHouston to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 73.9% | 74.9% | 1.35% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. IAH → DCAHouston to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.2% | 75.9% | 4.87% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 52 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am89 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am269 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm169 flights64.1%
- 2pm–5pm175 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm279 flights55.1%
- 8pm–5am71 flights42.0%
Scale runs 35% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 42.0% on time, against 94.3% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 279 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HOU to DCA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On HOU to DCA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.3% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 42.0%, a wide gap of 52.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.3%
- 8–11am87.8%
- 11am–2pm64.1%
- 2–5pm60.5%
- 5–8pm55.1%
- 8pm–5am42.0%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 54.1%. January is the strongest month at 80.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 73.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 17,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 28%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 17,497 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 5,680 minutes out of 17,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.81% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,218 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 1,053 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,052 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,052 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 68.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,022 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HOU to DCA questions
How often is HOU to DCA delayed?
About 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 31.7% of the 1,052 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is HOU to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
68.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HOU to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 42.0%, 52 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 October delays on HOU to DCA?
October is the weakest month at 54.1% on time, compared with 80.0% in January. Across the year that is 26 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
- DCA to HOU — the return legseparate record
- William P. Hobby (HOU) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- HOU to DAL, a related route81.6%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- HOU to ATL, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record68.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. HOU to DCA and DCA to HOU 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.