Carrier route record

OHMCI→DCA

PSA Airlines · Kansas City to Washington

Flights: 582
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 30%
Carriers: 5

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

PSA on MCI 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 2.3 hours behind schedule. That rests on 582 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on MCI to DCA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 48 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 534 completed flights

Avg delay

136 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.8%

Every carrier on MCI to DCA, 1,926 flights

These figures cover 582 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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 MCI to DCA

PSA flew 582 of the 1,926 flights on MCI to DCA, about 30% of it. Its 72.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 90.2% to PSA at 72.8%. Three 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 MCI to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	168	90.2%	85 min	2.38%	A
American Airlinesthin sample	25	80.0%	41 min	0.00%	B+
Republic Airwaysthin sample	152	74.8%	36 min	0.66%	C+
Southwest Airlines	999	73.1%	58 min	1.20%	C
PSA Airlines (this page)	582	72.8%	136 min	7.04%	C−

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 26 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–8am119 flights87.5%
8am–11am136 flights74.8%
11am–2pm102 flights75.0%
2pm–5pm201 flights62.0%
5pm–8pm24 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.5% of the time, against 62.0% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 201 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on MCI to DCA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 56.9%. January is the strongest month at 83.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. June was the busiest month here, with 82 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 65.3%. 15 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 20,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
12%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 19,729 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 7.04%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 10.1% 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 949 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 68.2% on time across 583 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 582 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 MCI to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 2.3 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. 534 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