Carrier route record
AAPIT→DCA
American Airlines · Pittsburgh to Washington
- Flights
- 100
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PIT to DCA draws a D−. Roughly one flight in three 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 100 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PIT to DCA runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 151 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 96 completed flights
Avg delay
85 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.0%
Every carrier on PIT to DCA, 1,431 flights
These figures cover 100 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 19.8% 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
American against every carrier on PIT to DCA
American flew 100 of the 1,431 flights on PIT to DCA, about 7% of it. Its 62.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 75.8% to Envoy at 56.2%. Two 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 Airways | 773 | 75.8% | 56 min | 2.07% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 362 | 62.8% | 84 min | 6.91% | D− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 100 | 62.5% | 85 min | 4.00% | D− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 196 | 56.2% | 51 min | 2.04% | D |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 37 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–8am—
- 8am–11am33 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm65 flights50.8%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 50.8% on time, against 87.9% 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 65 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PIT to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202554 flights68.0%
- Oct–Dec 20254 flights—
- Jan–Mar 20267 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202635 flights51.4%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 62.5% on time across 100 flights.
Split by quarter, American on PIT to DCA logged 54 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 4 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 7 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 35 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 62.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 3,073 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
- 7%Carrier
44% 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 3,073 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 3,073 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 1,301 minutes out of 3,073, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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. 19.8% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 65.6% on time across 100 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 100 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 American on PIT 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. 96 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PIT to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to PIT, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PIT to DCA75.8%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to DCA62.8%
- Envoy Air on PIT to DCA56.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) 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.