Carrier route record
AAPHL→MSP
American Airlines · Philadelphia to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 213
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHL to MSP draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 213 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,211 at 82.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so American on PHL to MSP runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 120 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 209 completed flights
Avg delay
89 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.3%
Every carrier on PHL to MSP, 2,023 flights
These figures cover 213 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.7% 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 MSP
American flew 213 of the 2,023 flights on PHL to MSP, about 11% of it. Its 65.6% on time is 13 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 78.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 82.4% to SkyWest at 65.0%. 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 82.4% of the time; PSA Airlines manages 74.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 522 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,211 | 82.4% | 130 min | 2.31% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 57 | 77.2% | 71 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PSA Airlines | 522 | 74.4% | 84 min | 7.85% | C− |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 213 | 65.6% | 89 min | 1.41% | C |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 20 | 65.0% | 45 min | 0.00% | C+ |
PSA Airlines cancels 7.8% 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 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 213 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am4 flights—
- 11am–2pm121 flights73.1%
- 2pm–5pm2 flights—
- 5pm–8pm62 flights66.7%
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 73.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 66.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 121 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHL to MSP through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025164 flights60.9%
- Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
- Apr–Jun 202637 flights77.8%
Scale runs 50% 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 65.6% on time across 213 flights.
Split by quarter, American on PHL to MSP logged 164 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 12 flights in Oct–Dec 2025 and 37 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 65.6% annual figure is the one to use.
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 6,414 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
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 6,414 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 6,414 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,454 of the 6,414 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.
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. 16.7% 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.
The 981 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 214 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 213 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 MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 213 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 65.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 209 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to MSP, every carrier
- American on MSP to PHL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on PHL to MSP82.4%
- PSA Airlines on PHL to MSP74.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.