Carrier route record
YXJFK→DCA
Republic Airways · New York to Washington
- Flights
- 2,082
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 82%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on JFK to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.4% 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 2,082 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Republic on JFK to DCA runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 69 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,963 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.38%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.8%
Every carrier on JFK to DCA, 2,528 flights
These figures cover 2,082 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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
Republic against every carrier on JFK to DCA
Republic flew 2,082 of the 2,528 flights on JFK to DCA, most of the route. Its 70.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 67.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 70.7% to JetBlue at 54.5%.
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 Airways (this page) | 2,082 | 70.7% | 67 min | 5.38% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 446 | 54.5% | 84 min | 5.16% | F− |
Flight by flight
Republic flight numbers on JFK to DCA
Departure window
When Republic runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 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–8am164 flights83.8%
- 8am–11am540 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm34 flights82.4%
- 2pm–5pm559 flights58.5%
- 5pm–8pm216 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am569 flights67.0%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 83.8% of the time, against 58.5% for the afternoon window. That is 25 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 569 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on JFK to DCA through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. September was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.9%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 39,000 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.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
36% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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. The split is drawn from 38,555 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 17,000 minutes out of 39,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.38%, 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. 10.3% 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.
At 213 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.2% on time across 2,050 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,082 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.
What to do with this
Booking Republic on JFK to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.38% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; 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. 1,963 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to DCA, every carrier
- Republic on DCA to JFK, the return leg
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to DCA54.5%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) 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.