Route reliability record
CID→PHX
Cedar Rapids to Phoenix
- Flights
- 772
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,252 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 772 CID to PHX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly CID to PHX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.6%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 760 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.1% on time across 440 flights
These figures cover 772 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 CID to PHX
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 260 | 88.3% | 62 min | 0.77% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 440 | 80.1% | 139 min | 1.59% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 72 | 74.6% | 61 min | 1.39% | C |
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 18 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–8am177 flights82.5%
- 8am–11am185 flights90.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm351 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm58 flights73.2%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.8% of the time, against 73.2% for the evening window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 351 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 96.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 82 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.2%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 63% of the 15,000 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.
- 63%Carrier
- 17%Extreme weather
- 12%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 17% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,893 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 63%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,336 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.26%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,252 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.2% on time across 773 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 772 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 772 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 760 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CID to PHX questions
How often is CID to PHX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 772 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CID to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CID to PHX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 73.2%, 18 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 CID to PHX?
November is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 96.4% in September. Across the year that is 26 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 CID — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on CID to PHX88.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on CID to PHX80.1%
- CID to ORD, a related route72.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- CID to DFW, a related route77.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.1%
- American Airlines on-time record74.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. CID to PHX and PHX to CID 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.