Carrier route record
AASTL→DCA
American Airlines · St. Louis to Washington
- Flights
- 175
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on STL to DCA draws a C. 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 175 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, PSA Airlines, flew 615 at 74.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on STL to DCA runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 101 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 169 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.9%
Every carrier on STL to DCA, 2,414 flights
These figures cover 175 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
American against every carrier on STL to DCA
American flew 175 of the 2,414 flights on STL to DCA, about 7% of it. Its 67.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 77.1% to American at 67.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 199 | 77.1% | 62 min | 3.52% | B− |
| PSA Airlines | 615 | 74.1% | 128 min | 5.20% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 22 | 72.7% | 32 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,403 | 72.5% | 57 min | 1.43% | C |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 175 | 67.5% | 83 min | 2.86% | C |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.2% 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 American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am66 flights85.9%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm104 flights55.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.0% on time, against 85.9% for the 5am–8am 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 104 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on STL to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025138 flights66.9%
- Oct–Dec 202532 flights68.8%
- Jan–Mar 20265 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 75%. 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 67.5% on time across 175 flights.
Split by quarter, American on STL to DCA logged 138 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 32 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 5 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 67.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 4,551 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
57% 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 4,551 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 4,551 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 85.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.86%, 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 costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% 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 719 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 runs 68.4% on time across 175 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 175 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 American on STL to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 169 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to STL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on STL to DCA77.1%
- PSA Airlines on STL to DCA74.1%
- Southwest Airlines on STL to DCA72.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) 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.