Carrier route record

OODSM→PHX

SkyWest Airlines · Des Moines to Phoenix

Flights: 350
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 33%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on DSM to PHX 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 350 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DSM to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 344 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.6%

Every carrier on DSM to PHX, 1,064 flights

These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

SkyWest against every carrier on DSM to PHX

SkyWest flew 350 of the 1,064 flights on DSM to PHX, about 33% of it. Its 82.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 93.6% to Southwest at 73.8%. Three 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 Airlines (this page)thin 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

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 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–8am138 flights88.2%
8am–11am33 flights96.9%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm141 flights78.4%
5pm–8pm38 flights67.6%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.9% of the time, against 67.6% for the evening window. That is 29 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 141 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on DSM to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025162 flights84.9%
Oct–Dec 2025115 flights78.9%
Jan–Mar 202653 flights80.4%
Apr–Jun 202620 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.8% on time across 350 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on DSM to PHX held fairly steady: 84.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 78.9% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 80.4% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.4%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 3,903 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
56%
Extreme weather
23%
National Airspace System
16%
Late-arriving aircraft
4%

Extreme weather accounts for 23% 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 3.8 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 3,903 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 2,197 of the 3,903 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.2% 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 an hour, 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 80.3% on time across 352 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. 350 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 SkyWest on DSM to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 350 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 82.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 344 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