Route reliability record
GJT→PHX
Grand Junction to Phoenix
- Flights
- 984
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 438 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 6 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 984 GJT to PHX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly GJT to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.7%, against 83.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 55 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 977 completed flights
Avg delay
95 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.0% on time across 944 flights
These figures cover 984 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 GJT 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 | 944 | 84.0% | 100 min | 0.53% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 40 | 62.5% | 42 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 23 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–8am321 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am47 flights80.9%
- 11am–2pm346 flights87.4%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm251 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 67.7% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 346 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 984 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 78.3%. August is the strongest month at 89.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 11 points. July was the busiest month here, with 92 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.5%. 7 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
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 2%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 10,000 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,626 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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
6.6% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 438 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 runs 81.1% on time across 983 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. 984 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. 984 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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 977 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GJT to PHX questions
How often is GJT to PHX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.9% of the 984 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is GJT to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
83.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on GJT to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.7%, 23 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 GJT to PHX?
November is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 89.2% in August. Across the year that is 11 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 GJT — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- GJT to DEN, a related route77.6%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- GJT to DFW, a related route83.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record62.5%
- 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. GJT to PHX and PHX to GJT 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.