Carrier route record

AABFL→PHX

American Airlines · Bakersfield to Phoenix

Flights: 354
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on BFL to PHX lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 354 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's BFL to PHX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 350 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.13%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

83.4%

Every carrier on BFL to PHX, 1,330 flights

These figures cover 354 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on BFL to PHX

American flew 354 of the 1,330 flights on BFL to PHX, about 27% of it. Its 83.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 87.0% to SkyWest at 83.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on BFL to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	46	87.0%	31 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	354	83.4%	76 min	1.13%	B
SkyWest Airlines	930	83.2%	94 min	2.04%	B

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 354 flights.

5am–8am141 flights87.1%
8am–11am26 flights—
11am–2pm176 flights79.9%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm9 flights—
8pm–5am2 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.9% on time against 87.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 176 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on BFL to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202549 flights87.2%
Oct–Dec 2025124 flights79.0%
Jan–Mar 202638 flights70.3%
Apr–Jun 202679 flights89.7%
Jul–Sep 202664 flights89.1%

Scale runs 60% to 95%.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 83.4% on time across 354 flights.

American on BFL to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 89.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 70.3%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 71 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 75.0%, a spread of 14 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on BFL to PHX runs when it is late

American on BFL to PHX often beats the schedule: 118 of 350 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 58 late arrivals split 15 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 23 an hour or more.

15+ min early118 flights33.7%
Within 15 min174 flights49.7%
15–29 min late15 flights4.3%
30–59 min late20 flights5.7%
1–2 hours late12 flights3.4%
2+ hours late11 flights3.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 350 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 56 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 6 made it up before arrival. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on BFL to PHX

The latest arrival of the period was on 3 November 2025, 5 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on BFL to PHX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
3 November 2025	5 hours 55 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 September 2025	5 hours 38 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
13 October 2025	3 hours 55 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
31 July 2026	3 hours 24 minutes	Carrier
26 July 2026	2 hours 48 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 4,411 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
Carrier
31%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
0%

60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,411 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 to one. The split is drawn from 4,411 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 87.1% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 425 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 78.3% on time across 354 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 354 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 American on BFL to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 354 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 83.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 350 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures