Route reliability record
HSV→DCA
Huntsville to Washington
- Flights
- 1,324
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 613 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.5% 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 1,324 HSV to DCA flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly HSV to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.4% of the time and Saturday flights 76.4%, against 71.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 66 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,261 completed flights
Avg delay
96 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
69.7% on time across 1,001 flights
These figures cover 1,324 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.8% 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 HSV 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 58 | 82.5% | 30 min | 1.72% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 265 | 73.2% | 57 min | 5.66% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 1,001 | 69.7% | 108 min | 4.40% | C− |
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 32 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am316 flights84.4%
- 8am–11am363 flights80.7%
- 11am–2pm307 flights65.2%
- 2pm–5pm27 flights—
- 5pm–8pm311 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 84.4% 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 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
July is the worst month at 58.3% on time, 19 points below August, the best at 77.5%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. August was the busiest month here, with 118 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 10 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 48% of the 35,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 13%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 35,198 reported delay minutes.
48% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.
Cancellations run at 4.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 12.8% 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.
The 613 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 72.1% on time across 1,321 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,324 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 DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.53% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 1,261 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HSV to DCA questions
How often is HSV to DCA 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 29.0% of the 1,324 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is HSV to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
71.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HSV to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 52.9%, 32 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 July delays on HSV to DCA?
July is the weakest month at 58.3% on time, compared with 77.5% in August. Across the year that is 19 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 HSV — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on HSV to DCA73.2%
- PSA Airlines on HSV to DCA69.7%
- HSV to ATL, a related route90.1%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- HSV to DFW, a related route76.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record82.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record73.2%
- PSA Airlines on-time record69.7%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. HSV to DCA and DCA to HSV are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed HSV to DCA’s on-time badge on your site
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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.