Route reliability record
OAK→PHX
Oakland to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,932
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 646 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,932 OAK to PHX flights, with a median arrival 2 minutes early.
Best time to fly OAK to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.1% of the time and Saturday flights 85.9%, against 77.4% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,924 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
77.4% on time across 1,931 flights
These figures cover 1,932 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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 OAK 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 Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,931 | 77.4% | 54 min | 0.26% | B+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Oakland to Phoenix
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SJC → PHXSan Jose to Phoenix | American Airlines | 86.8% | 87.5% | 0.78% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SFO → PHXSan Francisco to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 86.7% | 87.3% | 0.74% | 5am–8am, Wed | OO 6404 06:00 |
| 3. SFO → PHXSan Francisco to Phoenix | United Airlines | 80.6% | 81.0% | 0.49% | 5am–8am, Sat | UA 2374 07:00 |
| 4. SJC → PHXSan Jose to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 78.1% | 78.6% | 0.64% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. OAK → PHXOakland to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 77.2% | 77.4% | 0.26% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | — |
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 30 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–8am356 flights94.1%
- 8am–11am365 flights87.6%
- 11am–2pm288 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm315 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm356 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am252 flights63.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 94.1% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 69.7% on time, against 88.5% in February. 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 179 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 85.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 70.5%. 15 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 23,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 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 23,496 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 94.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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
6.2% 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 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 646 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 runs 75.6% on time across 1,939 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,932 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 88.5% on time and December 69.7%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,924 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OAK to PHX questions
How often is OAK to PHX delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.6% of the 1,932 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is OAK to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
77.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OAK to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.9%, 30 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 December delays on OAK to PHX?
December is the weakest month at 69.7% on time, compared with 88.5% in February. Across the year that is 19 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 OAK — the return legseparate record
- Oakland International (OAK) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- OAK to LAS, a related route78.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- OAK to SAN, a related route66.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record77.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. OAK to PHX and PHX to OAK are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed OAK to PHX’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.