Carrier route record
AAPHL→SFO
American Airlines · Philadelphia to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,288
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHL to SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,288 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on PHL to SFO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
73.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,263 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on PHL to SFO, 1,995 flights
These figures cover 1,288 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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 SFO
American flew 1,288 of the 1,995 flights on PHL to SFO, most of the route. Its 73.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 73.7% to United at 72.7%.
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 (this page) | 1,288 | 73.7% | 74 min | 1.71% | C |
| United Airlines | 707 | 72.7% | 75 min | 0.57% | C+ |
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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am102 flights87.1%
- 8am–11am356 flights82.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm363 flights73.3%
- 5pm–8pm368 flights63.6%
- 8pm–5am99 flights68.8%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.6% on time, against 87.1% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 368 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHL to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 59.7% on time, 30 points below November, the best at 89.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 148 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.7%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 24,000 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 8,634 minutes out of 24,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 24,411 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.71% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
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. 9.7% 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.
At 2,522 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.7% on time across 1,286 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,288 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PHL to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 89.8% on time and June 59.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,263 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHL to SFO, every carrier
- American on SFO to PHL, the return leg
- United Airlines on PHL to SFO72.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- 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.