Carrier route record

AAPHL→DTW

American Airlines · Philadelphia to Detroit

Flights: 179
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 7

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

American on PHL to DTW lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 179 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,557 at 82.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on PHL to DTW from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 177 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on PHL to DTW, 2,952 flights

These figures cover 179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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

American against every carrier on PHL to DTW

American flew 179 of the 2,952 flights on PHL to DTW, about 6% of it. Its 79.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.9% to SkyWest at 67.2%. Four 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 82.3% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 76.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 845 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHL to DTW
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	133	87.9%	102 min	0.75%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,557	82.3%	105 min	2.12%	B
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	179	79.7%	72 min	0.56%	B+
PSA Airlines	845	76.3%	73 min	5.80%	B−
Republic Airwaysthin sample	112	74.3%	110 min	2.68%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	57	67.9%	56 min	1.75%	C
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	69	67.2%	223 min	2.90%	C

PSA Airlines cancels 5.8% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

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 13 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am64 flights85.9%
11am–2pm80 flights73.4%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm25 flights—
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 65% 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 73.4% on time against 85.9% for 8am–11am. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 80 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on PHL to DTW through the year

Jul–Sep 2025148 flights77.4%
Oct–Dec 202530 flights90.0%
Apr–Jun 20261 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 79.7% on time across 179 flights.

Split by quarter, American on PHL to DTW logged 148 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 30 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 1 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.7% annual figure is the one to use.

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 2,582 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
37%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
27%
Extreme weather
9%
Security
0%

37% 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 2,582 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. The split is drawn from 2,582 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 85.9% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 453 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 72.3% on time across 179 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 179 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 DTW

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 179 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 79.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 177 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