Carrier route record
YXRDU→PHL
Republic Airways · Raleigh to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 216
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 8%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Republic Airways.
Republic on RDU to PHL 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 216 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 585 at 74.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Republic's RDU to PHL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 207 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.5%
Every carrier on RDU to PHL, 2,562 flights
These figures cover 216 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
Republic against every carrier on RDU to PHL
Republic flew 216 of the 2,562 flights on RDU to PHL, about 8% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Republic at 85.0% to PSA at 70.8%.
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 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 Airways (this page)thin 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 | 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 Republic runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 216 flights.
- 5am–8am14 flights—
- 8am–11am32 flights—
- 11am–2pm52 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm99 flights83.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 88.5% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 83.0%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 99 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Republic on RDU to PHL through the year
- Oct–Dec 202525 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202699 flights86.0%
- Apr–Jun 202692 flights89.0%
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.0% on time across 216 flights.
Split by quarter, Republic on RDU to PHL logged 25 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 99 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 92 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 85.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 81.0%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Republic runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 2,059 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
55% 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 2,059 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 2,059 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.70%, 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
6.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 83.2% on time across 215 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. 216 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 Republic on RDU to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.70% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 207 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to PHL, every carrier
- Republic on PHL to RDU, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on RDU to PHL74.0%
- American Airlines on RDU to PHL72.5%
- PSA Airlines on RDU to PHL70.8%
- Republic Airways 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.