Route reliability record

BUR→PHX

Burbank to Phoenix

Flights: 3,116
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 369 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B, 6 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 3,116 flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 2,168 at 85.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,078 completed flights

Avg delay

82 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.09%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Southwest

85.4% on time across 2,168 flights

These figures cover 3,116 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Which airline is most reliable on BUR to PHX

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.

On-time performance by carrier on BUR to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	2,168	85.4%	58 min	1.15%	A
Envoy Airthin sample	352	80.3%	61 min	0.57%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	525	79.5%	164 min	1.33%	B
American Airlinesthin sample	71	76.1%	78 min	0.00%	B+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 85.4%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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

5am–8am290 flights92.4%
8am–11am785 flights89.0%
11am–2pm470 flights80.5%
2pm–5pm658 flights82.9%
5pm–8pm694 flights78.6%
8pm–5am219 flights77.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 77.1% for the overnight window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 785 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 19 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.January best, November worst

Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 70.6%. January is the strongest month at 89.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. March was the busiest month here, with 288 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%. 14 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 50% of the 41,000 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
50%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
13%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

50% 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 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 41,187 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 92.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

5.8% 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 369 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 80.2% on time across 3,127 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 3,116 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. January runs 89.2% on time and November 70.6%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 3,078 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

BUR to PHX questions

How often is BUR 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 16.4% of the 3,116 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 BUR to PHX?

Southwest Airlines leads at 85.4% on time across 2,168 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 79.5%, 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 BUR to PHX?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 77.1%, 15 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 November delays on BUR to PHX?

November is the weakest month at 70.6% on time, compared with 89.2% in January. Across the year that is 19 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. BUR to PHX and PHX to BUR 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