Carrier route record
YXDTW→PHL
Republic Airways · Detroit to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 112
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 4%
- Carriers
- 7
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on DTW to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 112 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 Republic on DTW to PHL runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 40 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 106 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.5%
Every carrier on DTW to PHL, 2,952 flights
These figures cover 112 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.3% 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
Republic against every carrier on DTW to PHL
Republic flew 112 of the 2,952 flights on DTW to PHL, about 4% of it. Its 73.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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 Airways (this page)thin sample | 112 | 73.6% | 88 min | 5.36% | C− |
| American Airlinesthin 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 Republic runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 112 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Republic's DTW to PHL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 73.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Republic on DTW to PHL through the year
- Jul–Sep 202556 flights49.0%
- Oct–Dec 202546 flights95.7%
- Jan–Mar 202610 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 100%. 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 73.6% on time across 112 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on DTW to PHL logged 56 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 46 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 10 flights in Jan–Mar 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 73.6% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 79% of the 2,470 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 79%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 5%Carrier
79% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 2,470 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 2,470 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 5.36%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
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. 11.3% 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 earliest window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 74.3% on time across 112 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 112 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 Republic on DTW to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.36% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the earliest departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 106 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DTW to PHL, every carrier
- Republic 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%
- American Airlines on DTW to PHL72.3%
- Republic Airways network-wide record
- Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County (DTW) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.