Route reliability record
RSW→DCA
Fort Myers to Washington
- Flights
- 833
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 892 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 833 RSW to DCA flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to DCA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 80.7%, against 71.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 64 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 802 completed flights
Avg delay
91 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
72.3% on time across 776 flights
These figures cover 833 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.7% 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
Which airline is most reliable on RSW to DCA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 776 | 72.3% | 95 min | 2.32% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 56 | 55.1% | 57 min | 12.50% | D− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 23 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Fort Myers to Washington
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RSW → BWIFort Myers to Baltimore | Southwest Airlines | 77.6% | 79.3% | 2.09% | 5am–8am, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. RSW → DCAFort Myers to Washington | American Airlines | 70.6% | 72.3% | 2.32% | 8am–11am, Tue (route) | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 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–11am193 flights91.0%
- 11am–2pm170 flights66.3%
- 2pm–5pm201 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm269 flights61.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.3% on time, against 91.0% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 269 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 51.0% on time, 29 points below September, the best at 80.0%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.4%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 21,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
56% 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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 21,010 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 91.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.00%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 12.7% 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.
The 892 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.3% on time across 832 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 833 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DCA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.00% 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. 802 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to DCA questions
How often is RSW to DCA delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.8% of the 833 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RSW to DCA compared with the rest of the country?
71.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RSW to DCA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.3%, 30 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on RSW to DCA?
July is the weakest month at 51.0% on time, compared with 80.0% in September. Across the year that is 29 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.5%
- BOS to DCA, a related route74.0%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.7%
- American Airlines on-time record72.3%
- Republic Airways on-time record55.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record0.0%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. RSW to DCA and DCA to RSW are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed RSW to DCA’s on-time badge on your site
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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.