Carrier route record

OHPIT→DCA

PSA Airlines · Pittsburgh to Washington

Flights: 362
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.

PSA 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 362 flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on PIT to DCA runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 148 extra late arrivals.

On time

62.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 336 completed flights

Avg delay

84 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

6.91%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

69.0%

Every carrier on PIT to DCA, 1,431 flights

These figures cover 362 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% 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 PIT to DCA

PSA flew 362 of the 1,431 flights on PIT to DCA, about 25% of it. Its 62.8% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 69.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PIT to DCA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Republic Airways	773	75.8%	56 min	2.07%	B
PSA Airlines (this page)thin 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

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 41 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–8am12 flights—
8am–11am137 flights78.0%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm75 flights57.3%
5pm–8pm67 flights63.6%
8pm–5am68 flights37.3%

Scale runs 30% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 37.3% on time, against 78.0% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on PIT to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202582 flights74.7%
Oct–Dec 2025124 flights60.9%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights30.6%
Apr–Jun 2026100 flights72.0%

Scale runs 20% to 80%. 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 62.8% on time across 362 flights.

PSA on PIT to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 74.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 30.6%, a swing of 44 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 54.0%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
49%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

49% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 10,502 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 78.0% on time here.

Cancellations run at 6.91%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 14.3% 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 73.2% on time across 362 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 362 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 PIT to DCA

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.91% 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. 336 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures