Carrier route record

OHPIT→DCA

PSA Airlines · Pittsburgh to Washington

Flights: 371
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 26%
Carriers: 4

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

PSA on PIT to DCA draws a D−. About 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 371 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so PSA on PIT to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 126 extra late arrivals.

On time

64.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 343 completed flights

Avg delay

94 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

7.28%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

67.3%

Every carrier on PIT to DCA, 1,413 flights

These figures cover 371 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

PSA against every carrier on PIT to DCA

PSA flew 371 of the 1,413 flights on PIT to DCA, about 26% of it. Its 64.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 73.9% to Envoy at 51.2%. 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	749	73.9%	53 min	2.14%	C
PSA Airlines (this page)	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

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

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 57 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am17 flights—
8am–11am185 flights77.2%
11am–2pm3 flights—
2pm–5pm53 flights60.4%
5pm–8pm67 flights63.6%
8pm–5am46 flights20.0%

Scale runs 10% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 20.0% on time, against 77.2% 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 185 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on PIT to DCA through the year

Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025124 flights60.9%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights30.6%
Apr–Jun 2026100 flights72.0%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights77.2%

Scale runs 20% to 85%. 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 64.7% on time across 371 flights.

PSA on PIT to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 77.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 30.6%, a swing of 47 points on roughly 93 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 Thursday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 22 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late PSA on PIT to DCA runs when it is late

PSA on PIT to DCA often beats the schedule: 109 of 343 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 121 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 39 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.

15+ min early109 flights31.8%
Within 15 min113 flights32.9%
15–29 min late33 flights9.6%
30–59 min late39 flights11.4%
1–2 hours late31 flights9.0%
2+ hours late18 flights5.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 343 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 87 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 5 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 39 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at DCA.

The worst days

Worst days for PSA on PIT to DCA

The latest arrival of the period was on 5 March 2026, 18 hours 3 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of PSA on PIT to DCA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
5 March 2026	18 hours 3 minutes	Carrier
26 February 2026	13 hours 20 minutes	Carrier
19 February 2026	13 hours 14 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
14 July 2026	11 hours 5 minutes	Carrier
28 June 2026	10 hours 57 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why PSA runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 to one. The split is drawn from 11,332 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 77.2% on time here.

Cancellations run at 7.28%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly 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

14.3% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.1% on time across 371 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. 371 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 7.28% 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. 343 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures