Carrier route record

OHPHL→DTW

PSA Airlines · Philadelphia to Detroit

Flights: 845
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 7

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

PSA on PHL to DTW carries a cancellation problem, not just a delay problem: 5.8% of scheduled flights never operate, against 1.8% nationally. Of the ones that do fly, close to three flights in four 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 845 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate PSA 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

76.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 793 completed flights

Avg delay

73 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.8%

Every carrier on PHL to DTW, 2,952 flights

These figures cover 845 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% 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

PSA against every carrier on PHL to DTW

PSA flew 845 of the 2,952 flights on PHL to DTW, about 29% of it. Its 76.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Spirit at 87.9% to SkyWest at 67.2%. Five 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 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 Airlinesthin sample	179	79.7%	72 min	0.56%	B+
PSA Airlines (this page)	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

Departure window

When PSA runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 845 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am276 flights81.3%
11am–2pm120 flights71.8%
2pm–5pm168 flights77.6%
5pm–8pm32 flights—
8pm–5am249 flights73.6%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 71.8% on time against 81.3% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 276 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

PSA on PHL to DTW through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, December worst

December is the weak month at 56.1% on time, against 89.5% in May. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.1%. 11 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 55% of the 14,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
55%
Carrier
27%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
5%
Security
0%

55% 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 14,000 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 13,736 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 81.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 5.80%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen 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. 10.1% 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 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 79.5% on time across 846 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 845 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 DTW

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.80% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8am–11am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 793 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