Carrier route record
OHRDU→DCA
PSA Airlines · Raleigh to Washington
- Flights
- 838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 42%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on RDU to DCA carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.6% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, a little over half of flights arrive on time, worth a D− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 838 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 448 at 67.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on RDU to DCA runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 171 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 790 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
63.3%
Every carrier on RDU to DCA, 1,989 flights
These figures cover 838 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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 RDU to DCA
PSA flew 838 of the 1,989 flights on RDU to DCA, about 42% of it. Its 60.5% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 63.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 75.4% to Frontier at 0.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 67.2% of the time; Republic Airways manages 59.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 497 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 205 | 75.4% | 124 min | 2.93% | B |
| Envoy Air | 448 | 67.2% | 67 min | 4.69% | C− |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 838 | 60.5% | 74 min | 5.61% | D− |
| Republic Airways | 497 | 59.4% | 72 min | 5.43% | D− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 891 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Republic Airways cancels 5.4% 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 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 56 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am112 flights75.7%
- 8am–11am260 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm75 flights58.1%
- 2pm–5pm164 flights43.9%
- 5pm–8pm122 flights47.8%
- 8pm–5am105 flights27.8%
Scale runs 20% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 27.8% on time, against 83.9% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 260 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on RDU to DCA through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 41.1%. January is the strongest month at 85.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 45 points. October was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 53.4%. 22 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 46% of the 23,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 17%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
46% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 23,209 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 7,508 minutes out of 23,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 5.61%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in twenty 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. 14.9% 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 227 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 66.8% on time across 840 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 838 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 RDU to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.61% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; 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. 790 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to RDU, the return leg
- American Airlines on RDU to DCA75.4%
- Envoy Air on RDU to DCA67.2%
- Republic Airways on RDU to DCA59.4%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) 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.