DCA Washington, DC

Connecting at Reagan National: Terminal 1 and Terminal 2 have separate security

Last checked 30 October 2026

Is a 45-minute layover enough at Reagan National?

We estimate about 27% of 45-minute connections at Reagan National (DCA) ended in a missed connection between September 2025 and August 2026. How we count a missed connection

Allow 107 minutes for a connection at Reagan National (DCA).

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Reagan National has two terminals with separate security. Terminal 2 (Alaska, American, Delta, JetBlue, United) has all the gates from B10 to E59. Terminal 1 (Air Canada, Frontier, Southwest) has gates A1 to A9 and its own checkpoint. Connecting between them means going through security again. The time in the box above comes from connections within one terminal; we have no figure for changing between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2.

At a glance

Which terminal is my airline in?

This comes from the airport's gate-naming notice (effective 5 June 2022), its current airline list and its security page, checked 30 October 2026. Look up both airlines.

Your boarding pass or your airline's app is the final word.

Changing between Terminal 2 piers

Terminal 2's gates B10 to E59 sit on four piers, with gates lettered B to E. Two checkpoints, North and South, serve them. The airport says: "After clearing the new checkpoints, passengers are able to move freely between gate areas without having to be re-screened." The South checkpoint is the one closest to Alaska, Delta, JetBlue and United and it also serves American. The North checkpoint is closest to American.

Changing between Terminal 1 and Terminal 2

Step by step:

  1. Leave the secure area of the terminal you landed in.
  2. Walk to the other terminal. The airport's Terminal 2 description lists "a connector to Terminal 1"; it does not say whether the connector is before or after security.
  3. Go through the other terminal's checkpoint: Terminal 1's own checkpoint, or the North or South checkpoint in Terminal 2.
  4. Walk to your gate.

The airport's map quotes these times between terminals, from routes run on 24 September 2026: B10 to A1, 23 minutes; A1 to B10, 27 minutes; C33 to A5, 27 minutes; A1 to E59, 34 minutes. Each route on the map passes through "Go through Security Control". The quoted minutes include more than the walk, so treat them as the airport's own estimate.

Checkpoint hours are 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Terminal 1 (the airport's FAQ says that checkpoint generally opens at 4:30 a.m.), 4 a.m. to 11 p.m. at the Terminal 2 North checkpoint, and 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Terminal 2 South checkpoint. The airport's page does not carry a date for these hours, so check the live checkpoint information for the day you fly.

Landing from another country

The airport's security page says that for its international flights, "All immigration and customs screenings for these flights take place prior to boarding at the point of origination." That is preclearance: US Customs and Border Protection officers inspect you at the departure airport. CBP lists 16 preclearance locations in six countries: ten in Canada (Calgary, Toronto, Billy Bishop Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria and Winnipeg), Dublin and Shannon in Ireland, Aruba, Bermuda, Nassau in the Bahamas and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The airport's page does not say which of them have flights to Reagan National. CBP says preclearance travellers "bypass CBP and TSA inspections upon U.S. arrival".

So on a precleared flight you skip passport control and the second security check when you land. Your next flight is an ordinary domestic connection from there: if it leaves from the other terminal, the Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 steps above apply.

If your flights are on separate tickets

If you booked two flights separately, you collect your bags, check in again with the second airline, and go through security again. Add the time to collect your bags, check in again and go through security. If the two airlines are in different terminals, add the Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 change above on top.

Tips

GateCast grades your connection from A to F on how likely you are to make it. The grade is an estimate. GateCast knows which airlines you're flying but has no gate information, so at an airport with two terminals like this one, check your boarding pass and add time for any second security check.

How we count a missed connection

The layover times and missed-connection percentages on this page are estimates from our model, built on US DOT records (September 2025 to August 2026), with no guarantee; never book shorter than your airline's minimum connection time. All times and percentages are according to our model.

A missed connection means the real delays and cancellations that day left less time than our estimate of how long the change takes; estimated from US DOT on-time records for September 2025 to August 2026, with no passenger data.

The 45-minute figure is the estimated share of connections at Reagan National (DCA) that ended in a missed connection. The time in the box is the shortest layover after which another 15 minutes lowers the estimated missed-connection rate by less than 1 percentage point, on a curve fitted so that it never rises. The 1 percentage point is a judgement constant that we set. Extra time helps less and less because cancellations and long delays cause missed connections at any gap. Each time is our model's point estimate of where the fitted missed-connection curve levels off, from past flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The curve is calculated at 5-minute steps and joined by straight lines. Giving the time to the minute does not make it more certain: when we re-ran the estimate on 200 resampled sets of days, 95% of the times at Reagan National (DCA) fell between 88 and 109 minutes. At Reagan National (DCA), the estimated missed-connection rate was 12.9% at 107 minutes (and 12.1% at 2 hours) (share of connections, September 2025 to August 2026). We don't give a figure for 30 minutes. A 30-minute connection is about as long as our own estimate of the time to change planes, a median of 31 minutes in our data, so a percentage would mostly come from that estimate.

Checked 30 October 2026; layover figures checked 31 October 2026. Terminals, gates and airlines change, so confirm with the airport and your airline before you travel.

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