Route profile
IAD→PIT
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Washington to Pittsburgh, 182 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 73% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 2,811 flights. How this is calculated
IAD → PIT arrives on time 84.8% of the time; the return trip, PIT → IAD, arrives on time 88.7% of the time, a 3.9-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
IAD → PIT spends 26.9 minutes on the ground on a 182-mile trip: 20.8 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at IAD and 6.1 minutes from touchdown to gate at PIT.
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 90% of 2,692 comparable routes.
United Airlines (86.2% on time) and Republic Airways (84.4%) 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.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
31 min late
against a median of 8 min early
Percentiles over 2,811 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at PIT after arriving from IAD.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 29% | High risk |
| 45 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 60 min | 10% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 5.6% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 3.4% | Low 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 1.42% of the time and diverts 0.11% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 2,768 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 31 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 2,811 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
IAD → PIT flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 93.7% of the time, against 80.7% for 3–6 PM departures, a gap of 13.0 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 7 AM: too few flights to score
- 8 AM: 93.7% on time from 402 flights
- 9 AM to 11 AM: too few flights to score
- 12 PM: 88.4% on time from 638 flights
- 1 PM to 4 PM: too few flights to score
- 5 PM: 81.4% on time from 781 flights
- 6 PM to 9 PM: too few flights to score
- 10 PM: 81.8% on time from 826 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why IAD → PIT 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
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for IAD → PIT. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on IAD → PIT, at 42.3%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 93.7% of the time and 3–6 PM departures 80.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airways | 2,209 | 84.4% | 1.58% | -9 min | 5.8% |
| United Airlines | 602 | 86.2% | 0.83% | -7 min | 4.9% |
Republic Airways flew 78.6% of the 2,811 flights listed.
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.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| YX3540 Republic Airways | 10:05 PM | 686 | 80.0% |
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Thursday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 84.3%
- Feb: 88.7%
- Mar: 81.5%
- Apr: 91.7%
- May: 81.0%
- Jun: 72.3%
- Jul: 78.2%
- Aug: 84.2%
- Sep: 90.4%
- Oct: 92.1%
- Nov: 91.7%
- Dec: 80.3%
June is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 19.8 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: too few flights to score (28)
- August 2023: too few flights to score (85)
- September 2023: too few flights to score (12)
- October 2023: too few flights to score (103)
- November 2023: too few flights to score (30)
- December 2023: too few flights to score (33)
- January 2024: too few flights to score (52)
- February 2024: too few flights to score (50)
- March 2024: too few flights to score (72)
- April 2024: too few flights to score (52)
- May 2024: too few flights to score (51)
- June 2024: too few flights to score (30)
- July 2024: too few flights to score (44)
- August 2024: too few flights to score (41)
- September 2024: too few flights to score (54)
- October 2024: too few flights to score (64)
- November 2024: too few flights to score (81)
- December 2024: too few flights to score (63)
- January 2025: too few flights to score (62)
- February 2025: too few flights to score (62)
- March 2025: too few flights to score (46)
- April 2025: 89.1% from 129 flights
- May 2025: too few flights to score (111)
- June 2025: too few flights to score (100)
- July 2025: 76.0% from 129 flights
- August 2025: too few flights to score (105)
- September 2025: too few flights to score (111)
- October 2025: too few flights to score (111)
- November 2025: too few flights to score (108)
- December 2025: too few flights to score (102)
- January 2026: too few flights to score (113)
- February 2026: too few flights to score (104)
- March 2026: too few flights to score (115)
- April 2026: too few flights to score (96)
- May 2026: too few flights to score (88)
- June 2026: too few flights to score (86)
- July 2026: too few flights to score (88)
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 84.8% against 81.2% in the 12 months before — improving by 3.6 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 2,811 IAD → PIT 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