Carrier route record
OHSTL→PHL
PSA Airlines · St. Louis to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 133
- 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 PSA Airlines.
PSA on STL 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 133 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 630 at 81.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, PSA's STL to PHL record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 124 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
6.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on STL to PHL, 1,587 flights
These figures cover 133 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 16 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
PSA against every carrier on STL to PHL
PSA flew 133 of the 1,587 flights on STL to PHL, about 8% of it. Its 85.5% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from PSA at 85.5% to Southwest at 76.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PSA Airlines (this page)thin sample | 133 | 85.5% | 87 min | 6.77% | A− |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 100 | 84.7% | 108 min | 2.00% | B |
| American Airlines | 630 | 81.3% | 118 min | 1.11% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 724 | 76.3% | 57 min | 0.55% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 81.3%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When PSA 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 133 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split PSA's STL to PHL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 85.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
PSA on STL to PHL through the year
- Oct–Dec 202543 flights78.6%
- Jan–Mar 202679 flights91.7%
- Apr–Jun 202611 flights—
Scale runs 70% 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 85.5% on time across 133 flights.
Split by quarter, PSA on STL to PHL logged 43 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 79 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 11 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 85.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Delay causes
Why PSA runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 65% of the 1,563 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,015 of the 1,563 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,563 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 90.5% on time here.
Cancellations run at 6.77%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in fifteen 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
7.3% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 814 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.0% on time across 133 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 133 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 STL to PHL
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 6.77% 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. 124 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to PHL, every carrier
- PSA on PHL to STL, the return leg
- Republic Airways on STL to PHL84.7%
- American Airlines on STL to PHL81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on STL to PHL76.3%
- PSA Airlines network-wide record
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
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.