Carrier route record
OHMEM→PHL
PSA Airlines · Memphis to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 550
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 73%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on MEM to PHL lands a B−, 5 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 550 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, PSA's MEM to PHL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 525 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.4%
Every carrier on MEM to PHL, 758 flights
These figures cover 550 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
PSA against every carrier on MEM to PHL
PSA flew 550 of the 758 flights on MEM to PHL, most of the route. Its 82.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 82.9% to Republic at 81.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 550 | 82.9% | 92 min | 4.18% | B− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 208 | 81.2% | 62 min | 2.40% | B |
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 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–8am165 flights96.2%
- 8am–11am37 flights63.9%
- 11am–2pm200 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm51 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights79.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.2% of the time, against 63.9% for the morning window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 200 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on MEM to PHL through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 69.4%. August is the strongest month at 92.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. June was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 75.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 8,238 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
61% 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 8,238 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 8,238 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 96.2% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.18%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 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
7.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 875 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 551 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 550 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 PSA on MEM to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.18% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 525 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.