Carrier route record

AADSM→PHX

American Airlines · Des Moines to Phoenix

Flights: 494
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 46%
Carriers: 5

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

American on DSM to PHX lands a B, 2 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 about 3.0 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 494 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on DSM to PHX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

80.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 484 completed flights

Avg delay

180 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on DSM to PHX, 1,064 flights

These figures cover 494 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on DSM to PHX

American flew 494 of the 1,064 flights on DSM to PHX, about 46% of it. Its 80.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 93.6% to Southwest at 73.8%. Four 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 DSM to PHX
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 (this page)	494	80.0%	180 min	1.82%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	166	73.8%	59 min	1.20%	C

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 494 flights.

5am–8am155 flights79.3%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm213 flights80.7%
5pm–8pm126 flights79.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 80.7% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.

Across the year

American on DSM to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 71.7% on time, against 91.1% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 73 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.8%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 77% of the 17,000 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.

Carrier
77%
Late-arriving aircraft
18%
National Airspace System
3%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 13,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,433 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.82% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.5% 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 about 3.0 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 runs 77.3% on time across 494 flights, within 3 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. 494 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on DSM to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 494 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 484 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