Carrier route record
AAORD→DCA
American Airlines · Chicago to Washington
- Flights
- 2,268
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 32%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ORD to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.9% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about two flights in three arrive on time, worth a C− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 2,268 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 3,411 at 70.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on ORD to DCA runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 110 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,180 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on ORD to DCA, 7,104 flights
These figures cover 2,268 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on ORD to DCA
American flew 2,268 of the 7,104 flights on ORD to DCA, about 32% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.5% to SkyWest at 57.1%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 171 | 83.5% | 47 min | 2.34% | B |
| United Airlines | 3,411 | 70.1% | 74 min | 2.14% | C |
| Republic Airways | 1,150 | 69.8% | 73 min | 4.43% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,268 | 66.3% | 91 min | 3.62% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 57.1% | 106 min | 5.77% | D− |
Republic Airways cancels 4.4% 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.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on ORD to DCA
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 25 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am363 flights75.8%
- 8am–11am312 flights79.2%
- 11am–2pm647 flights60.5%
- 2pm–5pm361 flights68.4%
- 5pm–8pm228 flights54.4%
- 8pm–5am357 flights61.0%
Scale runs 45% to 85%.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.4% on time, against 79.2% for the 8am–11am 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 647 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ORD to DCA through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 74.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 247 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on ORD to DCA runs when it is late
The 734 late arrivals split 202 under half an hour, 204 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 328 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early450 flights20.6%
- Within 15 min996 flights45.7%
- 15–29 min late202 flights9.3%
- 30–59 min late204 flights9.4%
- 1–2 hours late171 flights7.8%
- 2+ hours late157 flights7.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 2,180 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
91 of 657 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 168 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 ORD to DCA
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 September 2025, 21 hours 46 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 |
|---|---|---|
| 11 September 2025 | 21 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 February 2026 | 17 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 August 2026 | 13 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 August 2026 | 13 hours 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 December 2025 | 12 hours 42 minutes | Extreme weather |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 67,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 67,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 67,034 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 79.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.62%, against 1.89% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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
15.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 612 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.9% on time across 2,271 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,268 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking American on ORD to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.62% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,180 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ORD to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to ORD, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ORD to DCA83.5%
- United Airlines on ORD to DCA70.1%
- Republic Airways on ORD to DCA69.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ORD to DCA57.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Chicago O'Hare International (ORD) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.