Carrier route record
AAPBI→PHL
American Airlines · West Palm Beach to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,177
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 81%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PBI to PHL lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That rests on 1,177 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's PBI to PHL record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,150 completed flights
Avg delay
116 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.29%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on PBI to PHL, 1,450 flights
These figures cover 1,177 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PBI to PHL
American flew 1,177 of the 1,450 flights on PBI to PHL, most of the route. Its 82.3% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.3% to Frontier at 58.7%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,177 | 82.3% | 116 min | 2.29% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 14 | 64.3% | 103 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 259 | 58.7% | 107 min | 2.70% | D |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on PBI to PHL
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am325 flights97.8%
- 8am–11am143 flights87.2%
- 11am–2pm310 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm223 flights69.2%
- 5pm–8pm172 flights75.6%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.8% of the time, against 69.2% for the afternoon window. That is 29 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 325 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PBI to PHL through the year
June is the worst month at 75.6% on time, 14 points below May, 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. March was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on PBI to PHL runs when it is late
American on PBI to PHL often beats the schedule: 456 of 1,150 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 203 late arrivals split 52 under half an hour, 61 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 90 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early456 flights39.7%
- Within 15 min491 flights42.7%
- 15–29 min late52 flights4.5%
- 30–59 min late61 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late45 flights3.9%
- 2+ hours late45 flights3.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,150 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
59 of 236 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 26 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on PBI to PHL
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 July 2026, 24 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 July 2026 | 24 hours 19 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 April 2026 | 22 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 June 2026 | 20 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 January 2026 | 20 hours 21 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 6 April 2026 | 18 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. The split is drawn from 23,616 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 9,735 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.29% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.0% on time across 1,178 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,177 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PBI to PHL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 89.2% on time and June 75.6%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,150 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PBI to PHL, every carrier
- American on PHL to PBI, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on PBI to PHL58.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Palm Beach International (PBI) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.