Carrier route record

WNTPA→PHL

Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Philadelphia

Flights: 157
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on TPA to PHL lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 157 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,674 at 74.6% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on TPA to PHL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 154 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.91%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

74.3%

Every carrier on TPA to PHL, 2,614 flights

These figures cover 157 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on TPA to PHL

Southwest flew 157 of the 2,614 flights on TPA to PHL, about 6% of it. Its 76.6% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 76.6% to Frontier at 73.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to PHL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	157	76.6%	54 min	1.91%	B
American Airlines	1,674	74.6%	96 min	2.09%	C
Frontier Airlines	783	73.1%	87 min	2.17%	C

No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 74.6%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am4 flights—
8am–11am76 flights84.0%
11am–2pm17 flights—
2pm–5pm60 flights66.1%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 84.0% of the time, against 66.1% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 76 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on TPA to PHL through the year

Jul–Sep 202513 flights—
Oct–Dec 202566 flights84.4%
Jan–Mar 202656 flights69.1%
Apr–Jun 202622 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. 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 76.6% on time across 157 flights.

Split by quarter, Southwest on TPA to PHL logged 13 flights in Jul–Sep 2025, 66 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 56 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 22 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 76.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 1,929 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.

Carrier
45%
National Airspace System
26%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
6%

The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 862 of the 1,929 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,929 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% 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.

The 920 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 runs 76.5% on time across 157 flights, within half a point 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. 157 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 Southwest on TPA to PHL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 157 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 76.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 154 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures