Carrier route record
OHRDU→PHL
PSA Airlines · Raleigh to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 656
- 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 RDU to PHL sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 656 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 585 at 74.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so PSA on RDU to PHL runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 68 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
70.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 627 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
4.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.5%
Every carrier on RDU to PHL, 2,562 flights
These figures cover 656 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.1% 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 RDU to PHL
PSA flew 656 of the 2,562 flights on RDU to PHL, about 26% of it. Its 70.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 85.0% to PSA at 70.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 216 | 85.0% | 66 min | 3.70% | A− |
| Frontier Airlines | 585 | 74.0% | 99 min | 4.62% | C− |
| American Airlines | 1,105 | 72.5% | 101 min | 2.35% | C |
| PSA Airlines (this page) | 656 | 70.8% | 83 min | 4.42% | C− |
Frontier Airlines cancels 4.6% 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 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 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am72 flights85.3%
- 8am–11am70 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm234 flights67.4%
- 2pm–5pm146 flights70.9%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.3% on time, against 85.3% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 234 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
PSA on RDU to PHL through the year
December is the weak month at 50.0% on time, against 82.5% 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 78.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 66.3%. 12 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 69% of the 15,000 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
69% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 15,198 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 85.3% on time here.
Cancellations run at 4.42%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 25 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. 12.1% 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 72.9% on time across 655 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. 656 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 RDU to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.42% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you an hour and a half; 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. 627 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to PHL, every carrier
- PSA on PHL to RDU, the return leg
- Republic Airways on RDU to PHL85.0%
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to PHL74.0%
- American Airlines on RDU to PHL72.5%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) 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.