Carrier route record
YXSDF→DCA
Republic Airways · Louisville to Washington
- Flights
- 439
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on SDF to DCA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 439 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's SDF to DCA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 431 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.59%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.9%
Every carrier on SDF to DCA, 1,029 flights
These figures cover 439 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Republic against every carrier on SDF to DCA
Republic flew 439 of the 1,029 flights on SDF to DCA, about 43% of it. Its 86.3% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 91.7% to American at 60.0%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 13 | 91.7% | 38 min | 7.69% | A− |
| Republic Airways (this page) | 439 | 86.3% | 56 min | 1.59% | A |
| PSA Airlines | 572 | 72.8% | 113 min | 6.99% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 69 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Republic flight numbers on SDF to DCA
Departure window
When Republic runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 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–8am357 flights91.8%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm52 flights65.3%
- 2pm–5pm23 flights—
- 5pm–8pm6 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 65.3% on time against 91.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 357 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on SDF to DCA through the year
June is the worst month at 70.8% on time, 26 points below August, the best at 96.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 56 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 83.1%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 3,282 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,258 of the 3,282 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,282 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.59% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 474 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 441 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 439 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 Republic on SDF to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 439 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 86.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 431 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SDF to DCA, every carrier
- Republic on DCA to SDF, the return leg
- PSA Airlines on SDF to DCA72.8%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.