Carrier route record
OHIAH→DCA
PSA Airlines · Houston to Washington
- Flights
- 276
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on IAH to DCA 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 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 276 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Republic Airways, flew 513 at 75.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on IAH to DCA runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.8%
Every carrier on IAH to DCA, 3,202 flights
These figures cover 276 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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
PSA against every carrier on IAH to DCA
PSA flew 276 of the 3,202 flights on IAH to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 69.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.9% to PSA at 69.0%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 513 | 75.9% | 64 min | 4.87% | B− |
| United Airlines | 2,413 | 75.2% | 70 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample | 276 | 69.0% | 109 min | 5.07% | 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.
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 36 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–8am84 flights84.8%
- 8am–11am119 flights68.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm42 flights48.7%
- 5pm–8pm31 flights54.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 40% 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 48.7% for the afternoon window. That is 36 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 119 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%
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 69.0% on time across 276 flights.
Split by quarter, PSA on IAH to DCA logged 3 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 40 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 233 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 69.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 73.8% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 57.1%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 8,834 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.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Extreme weather
- 19%National Airspace System
- 12%Carrier
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 24% 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 8,834 reported delay minutes.
45% 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 8,834 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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 5.07%, 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. 14.9% 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 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. 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 70.1% on time across 276 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 276 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 5.07% 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. 261 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
- Republic Airways on IAH to DCA75.9%
- United Airlines on IAH to DCA75.2%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.