Carrier route record
OHPHL→DCA
PSA Airlines · Philadelphia to Washington
- Flights
- 600
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on PHL to DCA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in two arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 600 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on PHL to DCA runs 19 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 193 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
58.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 575 completed flights
Avg delay
86 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
60.3%
Every carrier on PHL to DCA, 817 flights
These figures cover 600 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 18.1% 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 PHL to DCA
PSA flew 600 of the 817 flights on PHL to DCA, most of the route. Its 58.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 60.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 66.0% to PSA at 58.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 600 | 58.3% | 86 min | 4.00% | D− |
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 46 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–5pm233 flights49.6%
- 5pm–8pm144 flights55.3%
- 8pm–5am65 flights36.2%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 36.2% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 233 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on PHL to DCA through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 33.3%. August is the strongest month at 88.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 55 points. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 47.7%. 25 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.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,632 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 21,000 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.
Cancellations run at 4.00%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 18.1% 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 runs 58.5% on time across 601 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. 600 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 PHL to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.00% 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. 575 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to DCA66.0%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.