Route reliability record
OKC→PHX
Oklahoma City to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,859
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 833 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five 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 1,859 OKC to PHX flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 886 at 83.8% on time.
Best time to fly OKC to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 86.4%, against 80.0% 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
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,840 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.8% on time across 886 flights
These figures cover 1,859 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.4% 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
Which airline is most reliable on OKC to PHX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 83.8% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 75.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 843 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 130 | 86.5% | 63 min | 3.08% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 886 | 83.8% | 61 min | 1.02% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 843 | 75.1% | 99 min | 0.59% | B+ |
Southwest leads SkyWest by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on OKC to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Oklahoma City to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. OKC → PHXOklahoma City to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 82.9% | 83.8% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. OKC → PHXOklahoma City to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 74.7% | 75.1% | 0.59% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6392 08:31 |
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 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am287 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am422 flights83.5%
- 11am–2pm213 flights73.2%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm469 flights75.9%
- 8pm–5am126 flights70.6%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.5% of the time, against 70.6% for the overnight window. That is 26 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 469 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 71.8% on time, 16 points below January, the best at 87.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 174 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.2%. 9 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 44% of the 30,000 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%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,387 reported delay minutes.
35% 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 30,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.4% 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.
The 833 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 76.6% on time across 1,860 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,859 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. January runs 87.7% on time and July 71.8%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,840 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OKC to PHX questions
How often is OKC to PHX delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.0% of the 1,859 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on OKC to PHX?
Southwest Airlines leads at 83.8% on time across 886 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 75.1%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OKC to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 70.6%, 26 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 July delays on OKC to PHX?
July is the weakest month at 71.8% on time, compared with 87.7% in January. Across the year that is 16 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 OKC — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on OKC to PHX86.5%
- Southwest Airlines on OKC to PHX83.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on OKC to PHX75.1%
- OKC to DFW, a related route78.5%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- OKC to DEN, a related route79.2%
- American Airlines on-time record86.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.1%
- 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. OKC to PHX and PHX to OKC 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.