Route reliability record
PHL→DCA
Philadelphia to Washington
- Flights
- 817
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 120 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.2% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 817 PHL to DCA flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
Best time to fly PHL to DCA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 82.5% of the time and Saturday flights 73.9%, against 60.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 173 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 781 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
58.3% on time across 600 flights
These figures cover 817 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 PHL 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 217 | 66.0% | 69 min | 4.61% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 600 | 58.3% | 86 min | 4.00% | D− |
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 44 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–8am30 flights—
- 8am–11am126 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm2 flights—
- 2pm–5pm282 flights50.9%
- 5pm–8pm303 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am74 flights38.8%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 38.8% on time, against 82.5% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 303 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 49 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 83.0% 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 92 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 73.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 50.0%. 24 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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 25,467 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 82.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.16%, 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 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 120 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.0% on time across 819 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. 817 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 4.16% 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. 781 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHL to DCA questions
How often is PHL to DCA delayed?
Roughly 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 39.7% of the 817 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PHL to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
60.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 17 points against it. That is worth a D− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHL to DCA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 82.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 38.8%, 44 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 November delays on PHL to DCA?
November is the weakest month at 33.9% on time, compared with 83.0% in September. Across the year that is 49 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 PHL — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on PHL to DCA66.0%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to DCA58.3%
- PHL to ATL, a related route79.2%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- PHL to MCO, a related route72.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record66.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record58.3%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PHL to DCA and DCA to PHL 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.