Route profile
DFW→DCA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Dallas–Fort Worth to Washington, 1,192 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 17% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,254 flights. How this is calculated
DFW → DCA arrives on time 74.5% of the time; the return trip, DCA → DFW, arrives on time 78.8% of the time, a 4.3-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
DFW → DCA spends 23.8 minutes on the ground on a 1,192-mile trip: 18.4 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DFW and 5.4 minutes from touchdown to gate at DCA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why DFW → DCA flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DFW → DCA cancelled 262 of 10,254 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 39. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 89.3% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 44 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 262 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
234 cancellations, 89.3% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
25 cancellations, 9.5% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
3 cancellations, 1.1% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
262 coded cancellations were recorded on DFW → DCA; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
53 min late
against a median of 4 min early
Percentiles over 10,254 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DCA after arriving from DFW.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 41% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 25% | High risk |
| 60 min | 16% | High risk |
| 90 min | 8.7% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.3% | Some risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 2.56% of the time and diverts 0.61% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 9,929 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 53 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,254 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DFW → DCA flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 86.3% of the time, against 62.9% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 23.4 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 86.8% on time from 1,106 flights
- 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 87.2% on time from 1,047 flights
- 8 AM: 84.8% on time from 1,069 flights
- 9 AM: 78.0% on time from 317 flights
- 10 AM: 83.6% on time from 807 flights
- 11 AM: 79.4% on time from 133 flights
- 12 PM: 74.3% on time from 1,096 flights
- 1 PM: too few flights to score
- 2 PM: 64.3% on time from 360 flights
- 3 PM: 65.0% on time from 921 flights
- 4 PM: 57.7% on time from 604 flights
- 5 PM: 64.5% on time from 721 flights
- 6 PM: 64.0% on time from 469 flights
- 7 PM: 64.3% on time from 695 flights
- 8 PM: 66.1% on time from 700 flights
- 9 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why DFW → DCA runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for DFW → DCA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on DFW → DCA, at 43.6%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 86.3% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 62.9%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is the one the flight leaves from, where a cancellation keeps it from departing at all. Bad weather cancels 7.0 times the normal rate at DFW against 4.2 times at DCA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: DFW 10.4% against 1.5%, DCA 9.3% against 2.2%. Flights that did leave DFW in bad weather arrived on time 56.4% of the time, against 74.4% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | DFW | DCA |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 10.4% | 9.3% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 1.5% | 2.2% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 56.4% | 63.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 74.4% | 78.3% |
| Departures in bad weather | 72,822 | 41,449 |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from DFW and DCA, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad.
Weather source and limits. In full: DFW, DCA, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 10,254 | 74.5% | 2.56% | -4 min | 8.8% |
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
AA1623 (7:00 AM) arrived on time 88.3% of the time, 28.5 points more often than AA472 (5:02 PM) at 59.8%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.7 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 77.6%
- Feb: 76.3%
- Mar: 73.1%
- Apr: 73.3%
- May: 69.1%
- Jun: 66.6%
- Jul: 70.2%
- Aug: 75.0%
- Sep: 76.4%
- Oct: 78.5%
- Nov: 79.3%
- Dec: 79.3%
June is historically the weakest month and December the strongest, a spread of 12.7 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 74.7% from 252 flights
- August 2023: 75.2% from 277 flights
- September 2023: 77.3% from 264 flights
- October 2023: 80.6% from 278 flights
- November 2023: 85.1% from 262 flights
- December 2023: 83.0% from 273 flights
- January 2024: 70.0% from 273 flights
- February 2024: 74.1% from 261 flights
- March 2024: 74.5% from 279 flights
- April 2024: 71.3% from 241 flights
- May 2024: 56.0% from 248 flights
- June 2024: 67.9% from 249 flights
- July 2024: 74.6% from 258 flights
- August 2024: 74.6% from 278 flights
- September 2024: 79.4% from 297 flights
- October 2024: 80.2% from 309 flights
- November 2024: 85.0% from 292 flights
- December 2024: 79.8% from 306 flights
- January 2025: 84.5% from 308 flights
- February 2025: 77.9% from 280 flights
- March 2025: 76.7% from 309 flights
- April 2025: 72.3% from 300 flights
- May 2025: 71.4% from 310 flights
- June 2025: 64.4% from 273 flights
- July 2025: 62.4% from 278 flights
- August 2025: 75.2% from 273 flights
- September 2025: 72.0% from 270 flights
- October 2025: 74.5% from 279 flights
- November 2025: 67.2% from 264 flights
- December 2025: 75.1% from 274 flights
- January 2026: 77.6% from 278 flights
- February 2026: 76.6% from 252 flights
- March 2026: 67.8% from 277 flights
- April 2026: 75.9% from 294 flights
- May 2026: 77.5% from 297 flights
- June 2026: 67.6% from 270 flights
- July 2026: 69.6% from 271 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 73.1% against 75.9% in the 12 months before — declining by 2.8 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,254 DFW → DCA flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed