Route reliability record
PHL→LAX
Philadelphia to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 2,380
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,402 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 rests on 2,380 PHL to LAX flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHL to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 82.6%, against 78.3% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,335 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
78.4% on time across 2,335 flights
These figures cover 2,380 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHL to LAX
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 | 2,335 | 78.4% | 70 min | 1.58% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 44 | 75.0% | 68 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 0.0% | 16 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PHL to LAX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am350 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am577 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm287 flights76.8%
- 2pm–5pm467 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm510 flights68.6%
- 8pm–5am189 flights62.6%
Scale runs 55% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 90.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 577 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PHL to LAX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PHL to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.6%, a wide gap of 27.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.1%
- 8–11am85.1%
- 11am–2pm76.8%
- 2–5pm78.7%
- 5–8pm68.6%
- 8pm–5am62.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 66.5% on time, against 87.1% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 251 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 82.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 73.6%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 35,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 35,358 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.55% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.34%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,402 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg runs 79.6% on time across 2,372 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 2,380 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.1% on time and December 66.5%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,335 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHL to LAX questions
How often is PHL to LAX delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.7% of the 2,380 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PHL to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
78.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHL to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.6%, 27 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on PHL to LAX?
December is the weakest month at 66.5% on time, compared with 87.1% in September. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to PHL — the return legseparate record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- PHL to ATL, a related route78.0%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PHL to MCO, a related route72.4%
- American Airlines on-time record78.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Spirit Airlines on-time record0.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. PHL to LAX and LAX to PHL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.