Carrier route record
OHIAH→DCA
PSA Airlines · Houston to Washington
- Flights
- 439
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on IAH to DCA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is close to two hours behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 439 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,385 at 76.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on IAH to DCA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 398 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
8.20%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on IAH to DCA, 3,337 flights
These figures cover 439 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 17.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
PSA against every carrier on IAH to DCA
PSA flew 439 of the 3,337 flights on IAH to DCA, about 13% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 76.7% to PSA at 66.3%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,385 | 76.7% | 69 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| Republic Airways | 513 | 75.9% | 64 min | 4.87% | B− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 439 | 66.3% | 109 min | 8.20% | C− |
Republic Airways 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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 42 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am144 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am144 flights67.2%
- 11am–2pm25 flights—
- 2pm–5pm65 flights42.9%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights47.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.8% of the time, against 42.9% for the afternoon window. That is 42 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 144 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on IAH to DCA through the year
- Oct–Dec 20253 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202640 flights51.4%
- Apr–Jun 2026233 flights72.2%
- Jul–Sep 2026163 flights61.3%
Scale runs 45% to 80%. 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 66.3% on time across 439 flights.
PSA on IAH to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 51.4%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 146 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 58.3%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late PSA on IAH to DCA runs when it is late
PSA on IAH to DCA often beats the schedule: 106 of 398 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When PSA on IAH to DCA is late it tends to be very late: 70 of its 134 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 32 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early106 flights26.6%
- Within 15 min158 flights39.7%
- 15–29 min late35 flights8.8%
- 30–59 min late29 flights7.3%
- 1–2 hours late38 flights9.5%
- 2+ hours late32 flights8.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 398 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 116 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 15% of them. In the other direction, 35 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.
The worst days
Worst days for PSA on IAH to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 21 June 2026, 23 hours 54 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 21 June 2026 | 23 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 June 2026 | 15 hours 59 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 7 August 2026 | 15 hours 42 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 20 April 2026 | 6 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 August 2026 | 6 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why PSA 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Extreme weather
- 18%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,615 reported delay minutes.
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 to one.
Cancellations run at 8.20%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in twelve 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
17.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,208 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 runs 66.6% on time across 438 flights, within half a point 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. 439 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 IAH to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 8.20% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; 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. 398 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- IAH to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to IAH, the return leg
- United Airlines on IAH to DCA76.7%
- Republic Airways on IAH to DCA75.9%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- George Bush Intercontinental (IAH) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.