Route reliability record
DSM→PHX
Des Moines to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,064
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,149 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B, 3 points 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,064 DSM to PHX flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly DSM to PHX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 97.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.9%, against 80.6% 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
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,046 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.50%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.0% on time across 494 flights
These figures cover 1,064 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 DSM 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 | 47 | 93.6% | 36 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 7 | 85.7% | 142 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 350 | 82.8% | 66 min | 1.43% | B |
| American Airlines | 494 | 80.0% | 180 min | 1.82% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 166 | 73.8% | 59 min | 1.20% | 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 21 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–8am331 flights85.5%
- 8am–11am38 flights97.3%
- 11am–2pm86 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm427 flights77.8%
- 5pm–8pm177 flights76.7%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 76.2% on time against 97.3% for 8am–11am. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 427 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
April is the best month on the calendar at 89.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 127 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.8%. 8 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 24,000 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
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 16,000 of the 24,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 24,129 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.50% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.19%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 1,149 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 77.5% on time across 1,067 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,064 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. 1,064 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,046 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DSM to PHX questions
How often is DSM 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 19.4% of the 1,064 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is DSM to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
80.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DSM to PHX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 97.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.2%, 21 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 DSM to PHX?
November is the weakest month at 73.0% on time, compared with 89.5% in April. Across the year that is 17 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 DSM — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DSM to PHX82.8%
- American Airlines on DSM to PHX80.0%
- Southwest Airlines on DSM to PHX73.8%
- DSM to ORD, a related route73.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- DSM to DEN, a related route83.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record93.6%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.8%
- 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. DSM to PHX and PHX to DSM are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DSM to PHX’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.