Carrier route record
AALAS→DCA
American Airlines · Las Vegas to Washington
- Flights
- 364
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LAS to DCA lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate American on LAS to DCA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on LAS to DCA, 728 flights
These figures cover 364 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on LAS to DCA
American flew 364 of the 728 flights on LAS to DCA, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 78.9% to Southwest at 69.7%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 364 | 78.9% | 79 min | 1.37% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 364 | 69.7% | 40 min | 0.55% | C+ |
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 American 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 364 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's LAS to DCA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 78.9% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
American on LAS to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 27 points below April, the best at 93.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.0%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on LAS to DCA runs when it is late
American on LAS to DCA often beats the schedule: 151 of 356 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 75 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 26 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early151 flights42.4%
- Within 15 min130 flights36.5%
- 15–29 min late19 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late26 flights7.3%
- 1–2 hours late19 flights5.3%
- 2+ hours late11 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 79 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 24 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 20 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 American on LAS to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 March 2026, 12 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 March 2026 | 12 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 September 2025 | 8 hours 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 December 2025 | 5 hours 59 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 January 2026 | 4 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 August 2026 | 3 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American 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 5,935 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,935 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. The split is drawn from 5,935 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,487 of the 5,935 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.37% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.82%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,089 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 88.8% on time across 364 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 364 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 American on LAS to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 364 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAS to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to LAS, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on LAS to DCA69.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
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.