Carrier route record

AAPHL→CLE

American Airlines · Philadelphia to Cleveland

Flights: 272
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 26%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on PHL to CLE 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 an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 272 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PHL to CLE runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 60 extra late arrivals.

On time

71.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 261 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.04%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.6%

Every carrier on PHL to CLE, 1,057 flights

These figures cover 272 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 14.9% 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

American against every carrier on PHL to CLE

American flew 272 of the 1,057 flights on PHL to CLE, about 26% of it. Its 71.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 90.2% to American at 71.6%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	41	90.2%	75 min	0.00%	A+
PSA Airlines	590	75.2%	90 min	6.10%	B−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	154	73.2%	59 min	3.25%	C−
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	272	71.6%	83 min	4.04%	C−

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 14 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–11am1 flights—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm91 flights68.2%
5pm–8pm88 flights66.3%
8pm–5am92 flights79.8%

Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 79.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 14 points.

Across the year

American on PHL to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 2025141 flights68.4%
Oct–Dec 202538 flights63.2%
Jan–Mar 202610 flights—
Apr–Jun 202683 flights81.5%

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 71.6% on time across 272 flights.

American on PHL to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 81.5% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.2%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Thursday the weakest at 57.9%. 31 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 6,135 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
27%
Extreme weather
12%
National Airspace System
11%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 6,135 reported delay minutes.

50% 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 6,135 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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.

Cancellations run at 4.04%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 14.9% 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 363 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.0% on time across 272 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 272 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 American on PHL to CLE

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.04% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 261 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures