Carrier route record
OHPHL→ATL
PSA Airlines · Philadelphia to Atlanta
- Flights
- 834
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 15%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with PSA Airlines.
PSA on PHL to ATL carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 4.1% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, more than four flights in five arrive on time, worth a B− overall. The punctuality figure counts only flights that actually departed, so it flatters an operation that cancels this often. That rests on 834 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 3,029 at 84.9% on time.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.9% on time across 3,029 flights.
Key figures
On time
82.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 799 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.08%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.2%
Every carrier on PHL to ATL, 5,713 flights
These figures cover 834 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 PHL to ATL
PSA flew 834 of the 5,713 flights on PHL to ATL, about 15% of it. Its 82.1% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 90.1% to Spirit at 60.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 84.9% of the time; Frontier Airlines manages 66.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,008 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 156 | 90.1% | 93 min | 3.21% | A− |
| Delta Air Lines | 3,029 | 84.9% | 59 min | 2.48% | B |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 834 | 82.1% | 68 min | 4.08% | B− |
| American Airlines | 594 | 68.3% | 70 min | 1.85% | C |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,008 | 66.4% | 71 min | 2.78% | C |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 92 | 60.7% | 66 min | 3.26% | D− |
The spread between Delta and Frontier is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 17 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am118 flights80.9%
- 8am–11am305 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm72 flights69.6%
- 2pm–5pm223 flights80.5%
- 5pm–8pm61 flights86.4%
- 8pm–5am55 flights81.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 69.6% on time against 86.4% for 5pm–8pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 305 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on PHL to ATL through the year
December is the weak month at 68.0% on time, against 97.7% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 115 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.7% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 76.6%. 9 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 56% of the 9,662 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
56% 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 9,662 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 9,662 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 4.08%, 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
6.3% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 666 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 81.5% on time across 834 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 834 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 PHL to ATL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.08% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 799 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to ATL, every carrier
- PSA on ATL to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to ATL90.1%
- Delta Air Lines on PHL to ATL84.9%
- American Airlines on PHL to ATL68.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to ATL66.4%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.