Route reliability record
PIT→RDU
Pittsburgh to Raleigh
- Flights
- 715
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 328 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 715 PIT to RDU flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly PIT to RDU: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.6%, against 85.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 707 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.12%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Republic
85.1% on time across 678 flights
These figures cover 715 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PIT to RDU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 37 | 91.2% | 62 min | 8.11% | A− |
| Republic Airways | 678 | 85.1% | 56 min | 0.74% | A+ |
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 20 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–8am273 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am84 flights92.6%
- 11am–2pm9 flights—
- 2pm–5pm112 flights80.9%
- 5pm–8pm237 flights74.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.5% of the time, against 74.5% for the evening window. That is 20 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 273 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 75.4% on time, against 91.9% in October. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.2%. 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 42% of the 5,748 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% 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 5,748 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 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 5,748 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 94.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.12% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 328 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.3% on time across 715 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 715 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in RDU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 715 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 85.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 707 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PIT to RDU questions
How often is PIT to RDU delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.6% of the 715 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PIT to RDU compared with the rest of the country?
85.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PIT to RDU?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 74.5%, 20 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 PIT to RDU?
December is the weakest month at 75.4% on time, compared with 91.9% in October. Across the year that is 17 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
- RDU to PIT — the return legseparate record
- Pittsburgh International (PIT) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- PIT to ORD, a related route78.6%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.4%
- PIT to LGA, a related route80.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record91.2%
- Republic Airways on-time record85.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PIT to RDU and RDU to PIT are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed PIT to RDU’s on-time badge on your site
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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.