Carrier route record
OHSYR→DCA
PSA Airlines · Syracuse to Washington
- Flights
- 541
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 53%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on SYR 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 541 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on SYR to DCA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 500 completed flights
Avg delay
100 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
7.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.7%
Every carrier on SYR to DCA, 1,029 flights
These figures cover 541 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.2% 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 SYR to DCA
PSA flew 541 of the 1,029 flights on SYR to DCA, most of the route. Its 66.0% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 67.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 82.8% to American at 64.8%. Three 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 (this page) | 541 | 66.0% | 100 min | 7.21% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 221 | 64.8% | 83 min | 2.26% | D |
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 26 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–8am91 flights80.7%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm221 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm228 flights54.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 54.5% on time, against 80.7% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 228 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on SYR to DCA through the year
July is the worst month at 45.2% on time, 45 points below September, the best at 90.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.5% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 54.2%. 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 44% of the 17,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 15%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,991 reported delay minutes.
44% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations run at 7.21%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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. 15.2% 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 runs 67.8% on time across 541 flights, within 2 points 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. 541 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 SYR to DCA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 7.21% 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. 500 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SYR to DCA, every carrier
- PSA on DCA to SYR, the return leg
- Republic Airways on SYR to DCA68.8%
- American Airlines on SYR to DCA64.8%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- 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.