Carrier route record
WNPVD→DCA
Southwest Airlines · Providence to Washington
- Flights
- 672
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PVD to DCA lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 672 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 452 at 73.6% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PVD to DCA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 650 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on PVD to DCA, 2,453 flights
These figures cover 672 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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
Southwest against every carrier on PVD to DCA
Southwest flew 672 of the 2,453 flights on PVD to DCA, about 27% of it. Its 78.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 84.1% to PSA at 68.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 70 | 84.1% | 36 min | 10.00% | B− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 672 | 78.9% | 65 min | 2.68% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 196 | 75.1% | 63 min | 5.10% | B− |
| American Airlines | 452 | 73.6% | 56 min | 1.99% | C |
| PSA Airlines | 1,063 | 68.0% | 91 min | 7.24% | C− |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.2% 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.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am155 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am197 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm5 flights—
- 2pm–5pm107 flights64.3%
- 5pm–8pm208 flights61.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.0% on time, against 93.4% 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 208 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PVD to DCA through the year
June is the worst month at 63.5% on time, 26 points below October, the best at 89.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 82.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 8,885 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% 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 8,885 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 8,885 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 3,881 minutes out of 8,885, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.68%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 356 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 74.7% on time across 672 flights, 4 points below 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 672 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 Southwest on PVD to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 672 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 650 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PVD to DCA, every carrier
- Southwest on DCA to PVD, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PVD to DCA75.1%
- American Airlines on PVD to DCA73.6%
- PSA Airlines on PVD to DCA68.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.