Carrier route record
AAJFK→PHX
American Airlines · New York to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,524
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 51%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on JFK to PHX lands a B, 4 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 1,524 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 917 at 73.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's JFK to PHX record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,488 completed flights
Avg delay
93 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.9%
Every carrier on JFK to PHX, 2,972 flights
These figures cover 1,524 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
American against every carrier on JFK to PHX
American flew 1,524 of the 2,972 flights on JFK to PHX, most of the route. Its 82.0% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 82.0% to JetBlue at 73.0%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,524 | 82.0% | 93 min | 2.23% | B |
| Delta Air Lines | 917 | 73.9% | 61 min | 3.27% | C− |
| JetBlue Airways | 531 | 73.0% | 64 min | 2.82% | C |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on JFK to PHX
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am360 flights87.9%
- 8am–11am248 flights81.1%
- 11am–2pm362 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm152 flights82.3%
- 5pm–8pm402 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 87.9% of the time, against 75.9% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 402 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on JFK to PHX through the year
December is the weak month at 63.7% on time, against 87.7% in November. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 155 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.7%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 25,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 18%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 24,921 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.7% 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 2,153 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 77.3% on time across 1,522 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,524 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on JFK to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 87.7% on time and December 63.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- JFK to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to JFK, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on JFK to PHX73.9%
- JetBlue Airways on JFK to PHX73.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- John F. Kennedy International (JFK) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.