Route reliability record
MIA→PIT
Miami to Pittsburgh
- Flights
- 712
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,013 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 712 MIA to PIT flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly MIA to PIT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 84.4%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 699 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.69%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
71.8% on time across 613 flights
These figures cover 712 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% 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
Which airline is most reliable on MIA to PIT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 38 | 86.5% | 77 min | 2.63% | A |
| American Airlines | 613 | 71.8% | 56 min | 1.47% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 47 | 66.7% | 46 min | 4.26% | C− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 13 | 61.5% | 48 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Miami to Pittsburgh
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. MIA → PITMiami to Pittsburgh | American Airlines | 70.7% | 71.8% | 1.47% | 8am–11am, Wed (route) | — |
| 2. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Spirit Airlines | 67.9% | 70.9% | 4.25% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → PITFort Lauderdale to Pittsburgh | Southwest Airlines | 66.9% | 67.4% | 0.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 18 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–8am—
- 8am–11am37 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm38 flights76.3%
- 2pm–5pm229 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm14 flights—
- 8pm–5am394 flights70.8%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.6% of the time, against 70.8% for the overnight window. That is 18 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 394 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 42 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.
August is the worst month at 45.9% on time, 42 points below January, the best at 87.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 96 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 84.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 58.0%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 10,878 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 4,204 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.69% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.0% 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.
The 1,013 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 79.9% on time across 712 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 712 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PIT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 712 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 72.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 699 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MIA to PIT questions
How often is MIA to PIT delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 712 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MIA to PIT compared with the rest of the country?
72.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MIA to PIT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.8%, 18 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 August delays on MIA to PIT?
August is the weakest month at 45.9% on time, compared with 87.7% in January. Across the year that is 42 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
- PIT to MIA — the return legseparate record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- MIA to ATL, a related route73.7%
- ORD to PIT, a related route74.9%
- MIA to LGA, a related route68.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.5%
- American Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
Direction matters. MIA to PIT and PIT to MIA 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.