Carrier route record

OHMSY→DCA

PSA Airlines · New Orleans to Washington

Flights: 558
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 4

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

PSA on MSY 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 558 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 458 at 74.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on MSY to DCA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.

On time

67.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 522 completed flights

Avg delay

125 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.1%

Every carrier on MSY to DCA, 1,952 flights

These figures cover 558 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.7% 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 MSY to DCA

PSA flew 558 of the 1,952 flights on MSY to DCA, about 29% of it. Its 67.4% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.6% to PSA at 67.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 74.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 68.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 706 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on MSY to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airwaysthin sample	230	82.6%	52 min	1.74%	B
American Airlines	458	74.4%	81 min	3.06%	C−
Southwest Airlines	706	68.2%	67 min	0.99%	C+
PSA Airlines (this page)	558	67.4%	125 min	5.73%	C−

American Airlines cancels 3.1% 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 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 38 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am109 flights86.9%
8am–11am66 flights57.6%
11am–2pm80 flights74.7%
2pm–5pm232 flights63.6%
5pm–8pm71 flights48.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 40% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 48.5% on time, against 86.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 232 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on MSY to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights54.4%
Oct–Dec 2025140 flights68.8%
Jan–Mar 2026138 flights67.5%
Apr–Jun 2026188 flights72.0%

Scale runs 45% to 75%. 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 67.4% on time across 558 flights.

PSA on MSY to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 54.4%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 140 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.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.3%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

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 21,000 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
39%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
Extreme weather
16%
National Airspace System
11%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 16% 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 2.6 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 21,180 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,336 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations run at 5.73%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly 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. 15.7% 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 969 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 72.0% on time across 558 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 558 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 MSY to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.73% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you close to two 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. 522 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