Carrier route record
MQMSP→DCA
Envoy Air · Minneapolis to Washington
- Flights
- 140
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 5%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.
Envoy on MSP to DCA draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 140 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,695 at 75.6% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Envoy on MSP to DCA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 109 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 132 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.3%
Every carrier on MSP to DCA, 2,574 flights
These figures cover 140 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.4% 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
Envoy against every carrier on MSP to DCA
Envoy flew 140 of the 2,574 flights on MSP to DCA, about 5% of it. Its 66.7% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 75.6% to American at 61.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,695 | 75.6% | 60 min | 2.12% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 215 | 74.6% | 72 min | 5.58% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 483 | 72.7% | 160 min | 5.59% | C− |
| Envoy Air (this page)thin sample | 140 | 66.7% | 66 min | 4.29% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 61.5% | 73 min | 4.88% | D− |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.6% 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 Envoy 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 140 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Envoy's MSP to DCA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 66.7% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Envoy on MSP to DCA through the year
- Oct–Dec 202533 flights60.0%
- Jan–Mar 202665 flights60.7%
- Apr–Jun 202642 flights80.5%
Scale runs 50% to 85%. 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 66.7% on time across 140 flights.
Envoy on MSP to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 80.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 60.0%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 47 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Delay causes
Why Envoy runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 2,906 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 0%Extreme weather
50% 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 2,906 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 2,906 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 1,197 minutes out of 2,906, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 4.29%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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. 14.4% 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 931 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 75.9% on time across 141 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. 140 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 Envoy on MSP to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.29% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 132 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MSP to DCA, every carrier
- Envoy on DCA to MSP, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on MSP to DCA75.6%
- Republic Airways on MSP to DCA74.6%
- PSA Airlines on MSP to DCA72.7%
- Envoy Air network-wide record
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) 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.