Carrier route record

WNBUR→PHX

Southwest Airlines · Burbank to Phoenix

Flights: 2,168
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 70%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on BUR to PHX earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,168 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's BUR to PHX record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,140 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.6%

Every carrier on BUR to PHX, 3,116 flights

These figures cover 2,168 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 BUR to PHX

Southwest flew 2,168 of the 3,116 flights on BUR to PHX, most of the route. Its 85.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.4% to American at 76.1%. Two 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 BUR to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	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+

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

5am–8am290 flights92.4%
8am–11am422 flights92.0%
11am–2pm326 flights85.7%
2pm–5pm455 flights83.7%
5pm–8pm456 flights80.3%
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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 456 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on BUR to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, November worst

Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 75.3%. January is the strongest month at 93.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. March was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.9%. 13 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 65% of the 18,000 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
65%
National Airspace System
19%
Carrier
14%
Extreme weather
2%

65% 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 18,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 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 18,278 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 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 79.8% on time across 2,179 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 2,168 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 BUR to PHX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 93.2% on time and November 75.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 2,140 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures