Route reliability record
ELP→PHX
El Paso to Phoenix
- Flights
- 2,505
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 347 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,505 ELP to PHX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 775 at 85.0% on time.
Best time to fly ELP to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.5%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 43 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,485 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.0% on time across 775 flights
These figures cover 2,505 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ELP to PHX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 78.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,223 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 339 | 85.7% | 59 min | 0.59% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 775 | 85.0% | 110 min | 0.90% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 168 | 82.7% | 73 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,223 | 78.1% | 49 min | 0.74% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly El Paso to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. ELP → PHXEl Paso to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 84.2% | 85.0% | 0.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. ELP → PHXEl Paso to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 77.5% | 78.1% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 34 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am558 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am318 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm509 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm489 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm473 flights71.4%
- 8pm–5am158 flights59.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.9% on time, against 93.9% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 558 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ELP to PHX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ELP to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 59.9%, a wide gap of 34.0 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.9%
- 8–11am85.5%
- 11am–2pm86.1%
- 2–5pm77.0%
- 5–8pm71.4%
- 8pm–5am59.9%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,505 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
June is the worst month at 74.9% on time, 12 points below January, the best at 86.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 236 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 77.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 30,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 30,328 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
At 347 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.9% on time across 2,483 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,505 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 59.9% on time against 93.9% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 34 points is the largest single thing you control here. SkyWest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,485 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ELP to PHX questions
How often is ELP to PHX delayed?
Roughly 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 18.4% of the 2,505 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on ELP to PHX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 85.0% on time across 775 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 78.1%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ELP to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 59.9%, 34 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 June delays on ELP to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 74.9% on time, compared with 86.6% in January. Across the year that is 12 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 ELP — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on ELP to PHX85.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on ELP to PHX85.0%
- American Airlines on ELP to PHX82.7%
- Southwest Airlines on ELP to PHX78.1%
- ELP to DFW, a related route78.4%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- ELP to DEN, a related route79.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.0%
- American Airlines on-time record82.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. ELP to PHX and PHX to ELP 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.