Route reliability record

ABQ→PHX

Albuquerque to Phoenix

Flights: 3,317
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 328 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 3,317 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 686 at 86.0% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.0% on time across 686 flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,299 completed flights

Avg delay

75 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.51%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

86.0% on time across 686 flights

These figures cover 3,317 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 ABQ to PHX

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.0% of the time; American Airlines manages 79.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 558 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ABQ to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	189	86.8%	42 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	686	86.0%	82 min	0.73%	A+
Southwest Airlines	1,884	81.5%	55 min	0.32%	B+
American Airlines	558	79.7%	141 min	1.08%	B

SkyWest leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 32 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am637 flights94.2%
8am–11am444 flights83.0%
11am–2pm746 flights87.6%
2pm–5pm656 flights81.5%
5pm–8pm637 flights71.5%
8pm–5am197 flights61.9%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.9% on time, against 94.2% 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 746 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 13 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, June worst

June is the worst month at 74.2% on time, 13 points below February, the best at 87.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 320 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.4%. 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 47% of the 44,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
47%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

47% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 43,605 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 16,000 of the 44,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

5.7% 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 are the a little over an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.

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 79.0% on time across 3,311 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.

The sample behind these figures is 3,317 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking this route

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 87.6% on time and June 74.2%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,299 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

ABQ to PHX questions

How often is ABQ to PHX delayed?

About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 3,317 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.

Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to PHX?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.0% on time across 686 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 79.7%, a gap of 6 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on ABQ to PHX?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.9%, 32 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 June delays on ABQ to PHX?

June is the weakest month at 74.2% on time, compared with 87.6% in February. Across the year that is 13 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. ABQ to PHX and PHX to ABQ are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures