Route reliability record
PIT→DCA
Pittsburgh to Washington
- Flights
- 1,431
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 204 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 3.4% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, about seven flights in ten 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 1,431 PIT to DCA flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
Best time to fly PIT to DCA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.9% of the time and Saturday flights 81.0%, against 69.0% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 9 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 86 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,380 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
75.8% on time across 773 flights
These figures cover 1,431 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.4% 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 PIT 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 Airways | 773 | 75.8% | 56 min | 2.07% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 362 | 62.8% | 84 min | 6.91% | D− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 100 | 62.5% | 85 min | 4.00% | D− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 196 | 56.2% | 51 min | 2.04% | D |
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 4 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | United Airlines | 87.4% | 88.1% | 0.80% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. PIT → IADPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 86.8% | 88.4% | 1.83% | 5am–8am, Sat | YX 3679 06:15 |
| 3. PIT → BWIPittsburgh to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 84.4% | 85.5% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. PIT → DCAPittsburgh to Washington | Republic Airways | 74.2% | 75.8% | 2.07% | 5am–8am, 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 50 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–8am197 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am492 flights77.4%
- 11am–2pm369 flights62.9%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights57.1%
- 5pm–8pm220 flights58.1%
- 8pm–5am69 flights36.7%
Scale runs 30% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 36.7% on time, against 86.9% 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 492 flights scheduled in it.
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 81.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 61.2%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 45% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 45%National Airspace System
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 28,120 reported delay minutes.
45% 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 13,000 minutes out of 28,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 3.42%, 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. 10.4% 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 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 75.2% on time across 1,431 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,431 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 3.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about 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. 1,380 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 31.0% of the 1,431 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
69.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points against it. That is worth a C− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to DCA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 36.7%, 50 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 DCA75.8%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to DCA62.8%
- American Airlines on PIT to DCA62.5%
- Envoy Air on PIT to DCA56.2%
- PIT to ORD, a related route78.6%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- PIT to LGA, a related route80.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.8%
- PSA Airlines on-time record62.8%
- American Airlines on-time record62.5%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.