Route reliability record
PIT→DCA
Pittsburgh to Washington
- Flights
- 1,413
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 204 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.5% 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 1,413 PIT to DCA flights, of which Republic Airways flew 749 at 73.9% on time.
Best time to fly PIT to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Saturday flights 80.1%, against 67.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 100 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,362 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Republic
73.9% on time across 749 flights
These figures cover 1,413 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PIT to DCA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Republic Airways arrives on time 73.9% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 64.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 371 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 749 | 73.9% | 53 min | 2.14% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 371 | 64.7% | 94 min | 7.28% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 123 | 57.0% | 119 min | 1.63% | D |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 170 | 51.2% | 52 min | 2.35% | F |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.3% 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Pittsburgh 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. 3 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 87.7% | 89.4% | 1.88% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 3679 06:10 |
| 2. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | United Airlines | 85.3% | 86.0% | 0.77% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 3. PIT → BWIPittsburgh to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 84.5% | 85.7% | 1.40% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. PIT → DCAPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 72.3% | 73.9% | 2.14% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. PIT → DCAPittsburgh to Washington | PSA Airlines | 60.0% | 64.7% | 7.28% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 67 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am193 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am495 flights76.3%
- 11am–2pm373 flights60.2%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights59.7%
- 5pm–8pm243 flights55.7%
- 8pm–5am47 flights19.5%
Scale runs 10% to 90%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 19.5% on time, against 86.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 495 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PIT to DCA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PIT to DCA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 19.5%, a wide gap of 66.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.1%
- 8–11am76.3%
- 11am–2pm60.2%
- 2–5pm59.7%
- 5–8pm55.7%
- 8pm–5am19.5%
best all US flightsScale 10% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 37 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 51.9% on time, against 89.0% 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. October was the busiest month here, with 139 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.0%, a spread of 20 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 32,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 28 to one. The split is drawn from 31,876 reported delay minutes.
48% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 15,000 minutes out of 32,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.47%, 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 actually costs
10.8% 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.
At 204 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 72.7% on time across 1,413 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,413 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.
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 3.47% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 1,362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to DCA questions
How often is PIT 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 32.7% of the 1,413 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PIT to DCA?
Republic Airways leads at 73.9% on time across 749 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 64.7%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 19.5%, 67 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 PIT to DCA?
February is the weakest month at 51.9% on time, compared with 89.0% in September. Across the year that is 37 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 PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on PIT to DCA73.9%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to DCA64.7%
- American Airlines on PIT to DCA57.0%
- Envoy Air on PIT to DCA51.2%
- PIT to ORD, a related route77.1%
- BOS to DCA, a related route72.6%
- PIT to LGA, a related route79.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record73.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record64.7%
- American Airlines on-time record57.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PIT to DCA and DCA to PIT 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.