Carrier route record
AADTW→PHL
American Airlines · Detroit to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 179
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 6%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on DTW to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 2.1 hours behind schedule. That rests on 179 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,557 at 80.1% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on DTW to PHL runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 53 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 177 completed flights
Avg delay
129 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.56%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.5%
Every carrier on DTW to PHL, 2,952 flights
These figures cover 179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.1% 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
American against every carrier on DTW to PHL
American flew 179 of the 2,952 flights on DTW to PHL, about 6% of it. Its 72.3% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 80.1% to SkyWest at 61.5%. Four of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,557 | 80.1% | 77 min | 2.06% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 846 | 79.5% | 91 min | 5.20% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 78.8% | 79 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 112 | 73.6% | 88 min | 5.36% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 179 | 72.3% | 129 min | 0.56% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 57 | 69.1% | 55 min | 3.51% | C− |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 69 | 61.5% | 93 min | 2.90% | D |
PSA Airlines cancels 5.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 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–8am34 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm64 flights78.1%
- 2pm–5pm81 flights59.3%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 59.3% for the afternoon window. That is 35 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 81 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on DTW to PHL through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025147 flights68.5%
- Oct–Dec 202531 flights90.0%
- Apr–Jun 20261 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.3% on time across 179 flights.
Split by quarter, American on DTW to PHL logged 147 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 31 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 1 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 72.3% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,306 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 18% 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 2.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,306 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,400 of the 6,306 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
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. 14.1% 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 453 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 179 flights, 7 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 179 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 American on DTW to PHL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 179 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 72.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 177 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to PHL, every carrier
- American on PHL to DTW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DTW to PHL80.1%
- PSA Airlines on DTW to PHL79.5%
- Spirit Airlines on DTW to PHL78.8%
- Republic Airways on DTW to PHL73.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.