Route reliability record
PBI→PHL
West Palm Beach to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,552
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 951 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,552 PBI to PHL flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly PBI to PHL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 85.4%, against 77.0% 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
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,515 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.9% on time across 1,268 flights
These figures cover 1,552 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.0% 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 PBI 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 | 1,268 | 80.9% | 121 min | 2.29% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 64.3% | 103 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 270 | 58.9% | 102 min | 2.59% | D |
Flight by flight
Flights on PBI 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly West Palm Beach to Philadelphia
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. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PBI → PHLWest Palm Beach to Philadelphia | American Airlines | 79.0% | 80.9% | 2.29% | 5am–8am, Tue | AA 2642 07:00 |
| 2. FLL → PHLFort Lauderdale to Philadelphia | American Airlines | 75.5% | 77.6% | 2.76% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. FLL → PHLFort Lauderdale to Philadelphia | JetBlue Airways | 72.5% | 73.8% | 1.78% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 4. FLL → PHLFort Lauderdale to Philadelphia | Spirit Airlines | 67.2% | 70.6% | 4.80% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 5. FLL → PHLFort Lauderdale to Philadelphia | Frontier Airlines | 62.8% | 64.5% | 2.60% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
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 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–8am355 flights97.4%
- 8am–11am217 flights81.3%
- 11am–2pm351 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm258 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am68 flights65.7%
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 97.4% of the time, against 65.3% for the evening 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 355 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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 64.9% on time, 24 points below May, the best at 88.4%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 163 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.2%. 15 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 48% of the 40,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
48% 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 40,000 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 40,116 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 97.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.32% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
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. 11.0% 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 951 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 runs 74.4% on time across 1,553 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,552 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. May runs 88.4% on time and July 64.9%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,515 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PBI to PHL questions
How often is PBI to PHL 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 23.0% of the 1,552 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is PBI to PHL compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PBI to PHL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 97.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 65.3%, 32 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 PBI to PHL?
July is the weakest month at 64.9% on time, compared with 88.4% in May. Across the year that is 24 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 PBI — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PBI to PHL80.9%
- Frontier Airlines on PBI to PHL58.9%
- PBI to ATL, a related route82.9%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- PBI to EWR, a related route74.5%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record64.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record58.9%
- 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. PBI to PHL and PHL to PBI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed PBI to PHL’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.