Carrier route record

OHIND→DCA

PSA Airlines · Indianapolis to Washington

Flights: 192
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA on IND 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 192 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on IND to DCA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 105 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 167 completed flights

Avg delay

118 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

12.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.5%

Every carrier on IND to DCA, 2,025 flights

These figures cover 192 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.6% 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 IND to DCA

PSA flew 192 of the 2,025 flights on IND to DCA, about 9% of it. Its 67.1% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to PSA at 67.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on IND to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	5	100.0%	—	20.00%	A−
Republic Airways	1,800	75.2%	57 min	3.39%	B−
American Airlinesthin sample	28	74.1%	46 min	3.57%	C−
PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample	192	67.1%	118 min	12.50%	C−

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 192 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am9 flights—
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm115 flights66.7%
5pm–8pm65 flights62.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 66.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

PSA on IND to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025120 flights60.8%
Oct–Dec 202517 flights—
Jan–Mar 202611 flights—
Apr–Jun 202644 flights75.6%

Scale runs 50% 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 67.1% on time across 192 flights.

Split by quarter, PSA on IND to DCA logged 120 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 17 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 11 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 44 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 67.1% annual figure is the one to use.

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 6,513 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
14%

Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,513 reported delay minutes.

40% 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 6,513 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 12.50%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in eight 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. 15.6% 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 500 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.1% on time across 192 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 192 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 IND to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 12.50% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two hours; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 167 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures