Carrier route record
AASYR→DCA
American Airlines · Syracuse to Washington
- Flights
- 221
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SYR to DCA draws a D. 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 221 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on SYR to DCA runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 128 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
64.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 216 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.7%
Every carrier on SYR to DCA, 1,029 flights
These figures cover 221 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.8% 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 SYR to DCA
American flew 221 of the 1,029 flights on SYR to DCA, about 21% of it. Its 64.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.8% to American at 64.8%. 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 | 89 | 82.8% | 45 min | 2.25% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 178 | 68.8% | 73 min | 3.93% | C− |
| PSA Airlines | 541 | 66.0% | 100 min | 7.21% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 221 | 64.8% | 83 min | 2.26% | D |
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 38 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–8am38 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm104 flights60.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm79 flights56.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 56.4% on time, against 94.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 104 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SYR to DCA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202557 flights55.4%
- Oct–Dec 202549 flights65.3%
- Jan–Mar 202678 flights60.8%
- Apr–Jun 202637 flights86.5%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. 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 64.8% on time across 221 flights.
American on SYR to DCA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 86.5% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 55.4%, a swing of 31 points on roughly 55 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 56.2%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 6,328 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.
- 64%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 10%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
64% 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 6,328 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 6,328 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 14.8% 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 298 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 72.1% on time across 221 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 221 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 SYR to DCA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 221 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 64.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 216 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SYR to DCA, every carrier
- American on DCA to SYR, the return leg
- Republic Airways on SYR to DCA68.8%
- PSA Airlines on SYR to DCA66.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.