Route reliability record
ORF→PHL
Norfolk to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 826
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 212 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 826 ORF to PHL flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly ORF to PHL: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.2% of the time and Friday flights 81.7%, against 78.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 808 completed flights
Avg delay
103 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
77.9% on time across 779 flights
These figures cover 826 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.9% 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 ORF 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 47 | 80.9% | 110 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 779 | 77.9% | 103 min | 2.31% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on ORF to PHL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 826 flights.
- 5am–8am236 flights82.9%
- 8am–11am370 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm76 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm30 flights—
- 5pm–8pm114 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 84.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 75.2%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 64.4% on time, 25 points below September, the best at 89.2%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 102 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 81.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.2%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
44% 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 44 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 18,221 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 7,609 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
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. 9.9% 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 212 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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.6% on time across 825 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. 826 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 PHL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 826 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 78.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 808 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ORF to PHL questions
How often is ORF to PHL delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 826 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is ORF to PHL compared with the rest of the country?
78.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ORF to PHL?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 84.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.2%, 9 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 ORF to PHL?
July is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 89.2% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 ORF — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- ORF to ATL, a related route85.6%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- ORF to CLT, a related route82.4%
- Republic Airways on-time record80.9%
- PSA Airlines on-time record77.9%
- 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. ORF to PHL and PHL to ORF 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.