Carrier route record

YXMSY→DCA

Republic Airways · New Orleans to Washington

Flights: 230
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

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

Republic on MSY to DCA lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 230 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 458 at 74.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Republic's MSY to DCA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 224 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.74%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

71.1%

Every carrier on MSY to DCA, 1,952 flights

These figures cover 230 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Carrier by carrier

Republic against every carrier on MSY to DCA

Republic flew 230 of the 1,952 flights on MSY to DCA, about 12% of it. Its 82.6% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 71.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 82.6% to PSA at 67.4%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 74.4% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 558 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 Airways (this page)thin 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	558	67.4%	125 min	5.73%	C−

PSA Airlines cancels 5.7% 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 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 13 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am8 flights—
8am–11am96 flights90.3%
11am–2pm22 flights—
2pm–5pm48 flights77.1%
5pm–8pm56 flights77.4%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 77.1% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 96 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Republic on MSY to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202586 flights90.5%
Oct–Dec 202547 flights75.6%
Jan–Mar 202622 flights—
Apr–Jun 202675 flights79.7%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. 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 82.6% on time across 230 flights.

Republic on MSY to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 75.6%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 77 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.3%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Republic 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 2,029 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
29%
Security
13%
Carrier
11%
Extreme weather
8%

39% 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 2,029 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 2,029 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.3% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.74% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.87%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 runs 83.0% on time across 230 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 230 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 Republic on MSY to DCA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 230 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 224 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