Carrier route record
WNABQ→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Albuquerque to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,884
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on ABQ to PHX lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,884 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 686 at 86.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on ABQ to PHX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,877 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.32%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.4%
Every carrier on ABQ to PHX, 3,317 flights
These figures cover 1,884 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
Southwest against every carrier on ABQ to PHX
Southwest flew 1,884 of the 3,317 flights on ABQ to PHX, most of the route. Its 81.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.8% to American at 79.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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.
| 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 (this page) | 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
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 33 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am346 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am197 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm388 flights88.6%
- 2pm–5pm374 flights78.2%
- 5pm–8pm385 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am194 flights62.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.4% on time, against 95.7% 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 388 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on ABQ to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 70.3% on time, 20 points below January, the best at 90.1%. 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 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.2%. 14 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 19,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 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 19,016 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.32%, 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 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 last about 55 minutes, 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 75.6% on time across 1,880 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,884 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 Southwest on ABQ to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.1% on time and June 70.3%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,877 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ABQ to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to ABQ, the return leg
- Envoy Air on ABQ to PHX86.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on ABQ to PHX86.0%
- American Airlines on ABQ to PHX79.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.