Route profile
DTW→DCA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Detroit to Washington, 405 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 13% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 8,646 flights. How this is calculated
DTW → DCA arrives on time 74.3% of the time; the return trip, DCA → DTW, arrives on time 78.6% of the time, a 4.4-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
DTW → DCA spends 29.7 minutes on the ground on a 405-mile trip: 22.4 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at DTW and 7.3 minutes from touchdown to gate at DCA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
Every airline on this route performs about the same, a narrower carrier gap than 91% of 2,692 comparable routes.
PSA Airlines (75.2% on time) and Delta Air Lines (73.5%) are close together here.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 2,692 in the comparison.
Why DTW → DCA flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
DTW → DCA cancelled 234 of 8,646 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 37. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 62.0% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 60 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 234 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.
145 cancellations, 62.0% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
61 cancellations, 26.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
27 cancellations, 11.5% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
1 cancellation, 0.4% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
234 coded cancellations were recorded on DTW → DCA; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
56 min late
against a median of 5 min early
DTW → DCA has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 5 min early, but the worst tenth are 61 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 8,646 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at DCA after arriving from DTW.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 41% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 25% | High risk |
| 60 min | 17% | High risk |
| 90 min | 9.3% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 5.8% | 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 2.71% of the time and diverts 0.38% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,379 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 56 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 8,646 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
DTW → DCA flights departing 9 AM–12 PM arrived on time 84.9% of the time, against 57.4% for 12–3 PM departures, a gap of 27.5 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 84.9% on time from 159 flights
- 6 AM: 83.3% on time from 785 flights
- 7 AM: 82.3% on time from 1,110 flights
- 8 AM: too few flights to score
- 9 AM: 84.2% on time from 660 flights
- 10 AM: 85.0% on time from 1,389 flights
- 11 AM to 1 PM: too few flights to score
- 2 PM: 54.3% on time from 591 flights
- 3 PM: 63.4% on time from 702 flights
- 4 PM: too few flights to score
- 5 PM: 63.5% on time from 1,407 flights
- 6 PM: 61.5% on time from 297 flights
- 7 PM: 39.2% on time from 141 flights
- 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 75.1% on time from 1,074 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why DTW → DCA runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
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 DTW → DCA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 5,244 | 73.5% | 1.74% | -3 min | 8.4% |
| PSA Airlines | 2,666 | 75.2% | 4.46% | -9 min | 11.1% |
| Republic Airways | 644 | 75.0% | 3.73% | -7 min | 10.2% |
Delta Air Lines flew 61.3% of the 8,554 flights listed. PSA Airlines cancelled 4.46% of its flights here against 1.74% for Delta Air Lines.
Carriers on this route performed within a couple of percentage points of each other.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL2476 (10:05 AM) arrived on time 83.4% of the time, 30.5 points more often than DL1454 (2:59 PM) at 52.9%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Friday the least, a gap of 11.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 66.6%
- Feb: 68.8%
- Mar: 74.9%
- Apr: 77.8%
- May: 73.1%
- Jun: 71.1%
- Jul: 64.3%
- Aug: 76.5%
- Sep: 82.0%
- Oct: 85.7%
- Nov: 77.6%
- Dec: 73.6%
July is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 21.4 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 66.4% from 235 flights
- August 2023: 76.0% from 240 flights
- September 2023: 78.8% from 230 flights
- October 2023: 88.0% from 233 flights
- November 2023: 90.0% from 221 flights
- December 2023: 88.9% from 217 flights
- January 2024: 68.2% from 222 flights
- February 2024: 91.2% from 216 flights
- March 2024: 84.3% from 229 flights
- April 2024: 83.7% from 227 flights
- May 2024: 75.1% from 233 flights
- June 2024: 79.3% from 220 flights
- July 2024: 67.1% from 230 flights
- August 2024: 74.7% from 229 flights
- September 2024: 84.1% from 227 flights
- October 2024: 88.3% from 230 flights
- November 2024: 86.8% from 220 flights
- December 2024: 70.8% from 221 flights
- January 2025: 72.6% from 227 flights
- February 2025: 56.6% from 210 flights
- March 2025: 78.2% from 227 flights
- April 2025: 79.2% from 223 flights
- May 2025: 69.1% from 238 flights
- June 2025: 65.4% from 227 flights
- July 2025: 61.1% from 239 flights
- August 2025: 78.9% from 233 flights
- September 2025: 83.2% from 247 flights
- October 2025: 81.4% from 258 flights
- November 2025: 58.1% from 253 flights
- December 2025: 61.8% from 238 flights
- January 2026: 59.2% from 249 flights
- February 2026: 58.0% from 239 flights
- March 2026: 63.3% from 271 flights
- April 2026: 71.4% from 262 flights
- May 2026: 75.0% from 257 flights
- June 2026: 68.6% from 232 flights
- July 2026: 62.6% from 236 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 68.5% against 73.9% in the 12 months before — declining by 5.4 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 8,646 DTW → 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