Route reliability record
DRO→PHX
Durango to Phoenix
- Flights
- 994
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 352 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 994 DRO to PHX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly DRO to PHX: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 83.7%, against 78.7% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 989 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.7% on time across 994 flights
These figures cover 994 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 DRO 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 994 | 78.7% | 77 min | 0.40% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on DRO to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 30 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–8am193 flights88.6%
- 8am–11am185 flights66.5%
- 11am–2pm331 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm32 flights96.9%
- 5pm–8pm251 flights67.9%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 96.9% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 66.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 331 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 69.3%. August is the strongest month at 91.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 70.4%. 13 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 67% of the 16,000 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.
- 67%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 67%, 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 11,000 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,331 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.7% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 352 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.5% on time across 993 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 994 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. 994 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 78.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 989 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DRO to PHX questions
How often is DRO 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 21.3% of the 994 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is DRO to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
78.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DRO to PHX?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 96.9% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 66.5%, 30 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 May delays on DRO to PHX?
May is the weakest month at 69.3% on time, compared with 91.9% in August. Across the year that is 23 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 DRO — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- DRO to DEN, a related route81.2%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DRO to DFW, a related route80.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.7%
- 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. DRO to PHX and PHX to DRO 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.