Carrier route record

AAIAH→PHX

American Airlines · Houston to Phoenix

Flights: 622
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 21%
Carriers: 5

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

American on IAH to PHX lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.8 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 622 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's IAH to PHX record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 613 completed flights

Avg delay

168 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.45%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.7%

Every carrier on IAH to PHX, 2,930 flights

These figures cover 622 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% 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 IAH to PHX

American flew 622 of the 2,930 flights on IAH to PHX, about 21% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 83.3% to Frontier at 68.5%. 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 IAH to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	67	83.3%	98 min	1.49%	B
American Airlines (this page)	622	81.6%	168 min	1.45%	B
United Airlines	1,784	80.0%	64 min	0.34%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	180	69.7%	76 min	2.78%	C
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	277	68.5%	74 min	1.08%	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 622 flights.

5am–8am4 flights—
8am–11am323 flights81.4%
11am–2pm1 flights—
2pm–5pm232 flights82.6%
5pm–8pm61 flights78.3%
8pm–5am1 flights—

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

The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 82.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.

Across the year

American on IAH to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 70.0%. February is the strongest month at 90.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. June was the busiest month here, with 74 flights.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%. 19 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 55% of the 19,000 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
55%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
Extreme weather
7%
National Airspace System
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 19,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 18,963 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.45% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.2% 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 2.8 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,009 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 75.3% on time across 622 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 622 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 IAH to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 622 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 613 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