Carrier route record
AAMCI→PHX
American Airlines · Kansas City to Phoenix
- Flights
- 597
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on MCI 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 597 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's MCI to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 590 completed flights
Avg delay
119 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.1%
Every carrier on MCI to PHX, 2,471 flights
These figures cover 597 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 MCI to PHX
American flew 597 of the 2,471 flights on MCI to PHX, about 24% of it. Its 82.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 90.3% to SkyWest at 75.4%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 114 | 90.3% | 36 min | 0.88% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 55 | 83.6% | 53 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 597 | 82.7% | 119 min | 1.17% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,635 | 77.0% | 54 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 70 | 75.4% | 85 min | 1.43% | B |
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 19 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–8am172 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am68 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm299 flights80.8%
- 5pm–8pm54 flights69.8%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.2% of the time, against 69.8% for the evening window. That is 19 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 299 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on MCI to PHX through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 75.7%. June is the strongest month at 93.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. November was the busiest month here, with 74 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.0%. 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 48% of the 12,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 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 12,136 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 5,359 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,044 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 78.0% on time across 597 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 597 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 MCI to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 597 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 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 590 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- MCI to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to MCI, the return leg
- Envoy Air on MCI to PHX90.3%
- Southwest Airlines on MCI to PHX77.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Kansas City International (MCI) 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.