Route reliability record
ABQ→PHX
Albuquerque to Phoenix
- Flights
- 3,302
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 328 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 3,302 ABQ to PHX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 623 at 84.8% on time.
Best time to fly ABQ to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.9% of the time and Saturday flights 87.4%, against 81.8% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.8% on time across 623 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,282 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.8% on time across 623 flights
These figures cover 3,302 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to PHX
The three carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 222 | 88.3% | 41 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 623 | 84.8% | 83 min | 0.80% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 561 | 80.7% | 100 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,896 | 80.4% | 54 min | 0.37% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 84.8%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Albuquerque to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ABQ → PHXAlbuquerque to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 84.1% | 84.8% | 0.80% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 2. ABQ → PHXAlbuquerque to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 80.1% | 80.4% | 0.37% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 3. ABQ → PHXAlbuquerque to Phoenix | American Airlines | 80.0% | 80.7% | 0.89% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 36 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am655 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am426 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm717 flights88.2%
- 2pm–5pm695 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm628 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am181 flights56.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 92.9% 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 717 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ABQ to PHX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ABQ to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 56.7%, a wide gap of 36.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.9%
- 8–11am83.9%
- 11am–2pm88.2%
- 2–5pm81.0%
- 5–8pm69.6%
- 8pm–5am56.7%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
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.
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 87.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.8%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 29%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 39,515 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 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 77.9% on time across 3,293 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,302 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
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. 3,282 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ABQ to PHX questions
How often is ABQ to PHX delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.2% of the 3,302 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ABQ to PHX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.8% on time across 623 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 80.4%, a gap of 4 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 92.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 56.7%, 36 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.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to ABQ — the return legseparate record
- Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ABQ to PHX88.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on ABQ to PHX84.8%
- American Airlines on ABQ to PHX80.7%
- Southwest Airlines on ABQ to PHX80.4%
- ABQ to DEN, a related route82.3%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ABQ to DFW, a related route81.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.8%
- American Airlines on-time record80.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.