Route reliability record
AUS→PHX
Austin to Phoenix
- Flights
- 3,410
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 872 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 3,410 AUS to PHX flights, of which American Airlines flew 1,223 at 81.3% on time.
Best time to fly AUS to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Saturday flights 84.7%, against 79.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,379 completed flights
Avg delay
79 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
81.3% on time across 1,223 flights
These figures cover 3,410 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 AUS to PHX
The two 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 | 2 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 56 | 83.9% | 75 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,223 | 81.3% | 132 min | 0.74% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 2,002 | 77.5% | 54 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 77.4% | 55 min | 2.36% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 81.3%, 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 Austin 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. AUS → PHXAustin to Phoenix | American Airlines | 80.7% | 81.3% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. AUS → PHXAustin to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 77.0% | 77.5% | 0.70% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
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 31 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am700 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am366 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm662 flights81.7%
- 2pm–5pm794 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm604 flights66.0%
- 8pm–5am284 flights62.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.6% on time, against 93.5% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 794 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter AUS 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 AUS to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.5% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.6%, a wide gap of 30.9 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.5%
- 8–11am87.4%
- 11am–2pm81.7%
- 2–5pm75.9%
- 5–8pm66.0%
- 8pm–5am62.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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 68.2% on time, 17 points below December, the best at 85.5%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 348 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.3%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 56,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 56,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 55,673 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 23,000 of the 56,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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
7.8% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 872 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 3,358 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,410 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. December runs 85.5% on time and June 68.2%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,379 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AUS to PHX questions
How often is AUS to PHX delayed?
About 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 21.0% of the 3,410 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AUS to PHX?
American Airlines leads at 81.3% on time across 1,223 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 77.5%, 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 AUS to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.6%, 31 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 AUS to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 68.2% on time, compared with 85.5% in December. Across the year that is 17 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 AUS — the return legseparate record
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on AUS to PHX81.3%
- Southwest Airlines on AUS to PHX77.5%
- Frontier Airlines on AUS to PHX77.4%
- AUS to DEN, a related route78.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- AUS to DFW, a related route74.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.9%
- American Airlines on-time record81.3%
- 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. AUS to PHX and PHX to AUS 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.