Carrier route record
OHPHL→RDU
PSA Airlines · Philadelphia to Raleigh
- Flights
- 655
- 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 PSA Airlines.
PSA on PHL to RDU sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 655 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 585 at 81.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on PHL to RDU runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 47 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 632 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.0%
Every carrier on PHL to RDU, 2,560 flights
These figures cover 655 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.0% 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 RDU
PSA flew 655 of the 2,560 flights on PHL to RDU, about 26% of it. Its 72.9% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 83.2% to American at 71.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 81.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 71.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,105 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 215 | 83.2% | 75 min | 3.26% | B− |
| Frontier Airlines | 585 | 81.2% | 68 min | 2.56% | B |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 655 | 72.9% | 80 min | 3.51% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,105 | 71.3% | 81 min | 2.35% | C |
Frontier leads American by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When PSA runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am57 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am174 flights74.6%
- 11am–2pm174 flights74.0%
- 2pm–5pm102 flights72.7%
- 5pm–8pm93 flights62.9%
- 8pm–5am55 flights67.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.9% on time, against 86.0% 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 174 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on PHL to RDU through the year
December is the weak month at 49.4% on time, against 88.7% in April. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 78.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 68.4%. 10 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 52% 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
52% 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 5 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 13,636 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 86.0% on time here.
Cancellations run at 3.51%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 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. 12.0% 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 337 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 70.8% on time across 656 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 655 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 RDU
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.51% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 632 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to RDU, every carrier
- PSA on RDU to PHL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on PHL to RDU83.2%
- Frontier Airlines on PHL to RDU81.2%
- American Airlines on PHL to RDU71.3%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.