Route reliability record
ORF→DCA
Norfolk to Washington
- Flights
- 1,041
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 142 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% 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 1,041 ORF to DCA flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORF to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Saturday flights 80.9%, against 67.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 104 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,004 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
67.5% on time across 1,013 flights
These figures cover 1,041 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
Which airline is most reliable on ORF to DCA
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 40 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,013 | 67.5% | 103 min | 3.36% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 24 | 52.4% | 46 min | 12.50% | F− |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Norfolk to Washington
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ORF → BWINorfolk to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 82.5% | 83.8% | 1.56% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. ORF → DCANorfolk to Washington | PSA Airlines | 65.2% | 67.5% | 3.36% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 49 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–8am361 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am249 flights63.6%
- 11am–2pm98 flights62.4%
- 2pm–5pm184 flights42.5%
- 5pm–8pm95 flights52.2%
- 8pm–5am54 flights41.9%
Scale runs 35% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 41.9% on time, against 90.6% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
February is the weak month at 54.9% on time, against 79.8% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 58.6%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 33,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 2.3 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 33,105 reported delay minutes.
40% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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 3.55%, against 1.81% 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 actually 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.
At 142 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.9% on time across 1,042 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,041 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.55% 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. 1,004 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORF to DCA questions
How often is ORF to DCA delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 32.8% of the 1,041 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ORF to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
67.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 10 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORF to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 41.9%, 49 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are February delays on ORF to DCA?
February is the weakest month at 54.9% on time, compared with 79.8% in September. Across the year that is 25 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to ORF — the return legseparate record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- ORF to ATL, a related route85.6%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- ORF to CLT, a related route82.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record75.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record67.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record52.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ORF to DCA and DCA to ORF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.