Route reliability record
LAS→PHL
Las Vegas to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,494
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,177 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,494 LAS to PHL flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAS to PHL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.2%, against 83.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,464 completed flights
Avg delay
73 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
85.5% on time across 1,298 flights
These figures cover 1,494 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LAS to PHL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,298 | 85.5% | 78 min | 1.77% | A |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 83 | 77.1% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 113 | 61.6% | 63 min | 0.88% | D+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 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–8am156 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am448 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm221 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm56 flights75.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am613 flights83.1%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.4% of the time, against 75.0% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 613 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 68.1% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 90.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 164 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 18,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
34% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 17,922 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 8,266 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.61% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,177 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 1,489 flights, 8 points below 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,494 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 90.7% on time and July 68.1%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,464 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAS to PHL questions
How often is LAS to PHL delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.8% of the 1,494 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is LAS to PHL compared with the rest of the country?
83.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAS to PHL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.0%, 16 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on LAS to PHL?
July is the weakest month at 68.1% on time, compared with 90.7% in February. Across the year that is 23 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to LAS — the return legseparate record
- Harry Reid International (LAS) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- American Airlines on LAS to PHL85.5%
- Frontier Airlines on LAS to PHL61.6%
- LAS to LAX, a related route78.8%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- LAS to DEN, a related route77.0%
- American Airlines on-time record85.5%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record77.1%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record61.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LAS to PHL and PHL to LAS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.