Route reliability record
PIT→PHL
Pittsburgh to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,226
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 268 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,226 PIT to PHL flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to PHL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.6%, against 77.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
77.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,195 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
75.1% on time across 625 flights
These figures cover 1,226 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.8% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PIT to PHL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 305 | 89.7% | 46 min | 1.64% | A |
| American Airlines | 625 | 75.1% | 93 min | 2.24% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 192 | 72.5% | 94 min | 5.21% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 104 | 61.8% | 123 min | 1.92% | D |
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 40 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–8am361 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am247 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm176 flights84.5%
- 2pm–5pm187 flights50.8%
- 5pm–8pm254 flights68.9%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.9% of the time, against 50.8% for the afternoon window. That is 40 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
July is the worst month at 59.3% on time, 36 points below March, the best at 95.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.3%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 25,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 25,045 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 90.9% on time here.
Cancellations run at 2.53%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 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 actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.8% 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 268 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 75.9% on time across 1,227 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 1,226 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 PHL 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. March runs 95.1% on time and July 59.3%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,195 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to PHL questions
How often is PIT to PHL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.8% of the 1,226 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is PIT to PHL compared with the rest of the country?
77.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to PHL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.9% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 50.8%, 40 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 July delays on PIT to PHL?
July is the weakest month at 59.3% on time, compared with 95.1% in March. Across the year that is 36 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
- PHL to PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- Republic Airways on PIT to PHL89.7%
- American Airlines on PIT to PHL75.1%
- PSA Airlines on PIT to PHL72.5%
- Frontier Airlines on PIT to PHL61.8%
- PIT to ORD, a related route78.6%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- PIT to LGA, a related route80.9%
- Republic Airways on-time record89.7%
- American Airlines on-time record75.1%
- PSA Airlines on-time record72.5%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. PIT to PHL and PHL to PIT 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.