Carrier route record
AAOKC→PHX
American Airlines · Oklahoma City to Phoenix
- Flights
- 134
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on OKC to PHX earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 134 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 866 at 82.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's OKC to PHX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 130 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.99%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.6%
Every carrier on OKC to PHX, 1,834 flights
These figures cover 134 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 18 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.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on OKC to PHX
American flew 134 of the 1,834 flights on OKC to PHX, about 7% of it. Its 86.2% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 86.2% to SkyWest at 77.3%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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)thin sample | 134 | 86.2% | 65 min | 2.99% | A |
| Southwest Airlines | 866 | 82.9% | 58 min | 0.92% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 834 | 77.3% | 97 min | 0.60% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 82.9%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 134 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm37 flights91.2%
- 5pm–8pm97 flights84.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 91.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 84.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 97 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on OKC to PHX through the year
- Oct–Dec 202533 flights78.8%
- Jan–Mar 202692 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 20265 flights—
- Jul–Sep 20264 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.2% on time across 134 flights.
Split by quarter, American on OKC to PHX logged 33 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 92 flights in Jan–Mar 2026, 5 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 4 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on OKC to PHX runs when it is late
American on OKC to PHX often beats the schedule: 81 of 130 completed flights, 62%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 18 late arrivals split 5 under half an hour, 6 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 7 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights62.3%
- Within 15 min31 flights23.8%
- 15–29 min late5 flights3.8%
- 30–59 min late6 flights4.6%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights3.1%
- 2+ hours late3 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 130 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 15 of 130 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for American on OKC to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 3 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2025 | 3 hours 33 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 2 December 2025 | 2 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 30 March 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 March 2026 | 1 hour 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 August 2026 | 1 hour 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 1,167 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%National Airspace System
- 9%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,167 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 1,167 reported delay minutes.
35% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 410 minutes out of 1,167, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations run at 2.99%, against 1.89% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, 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.
The return leg runs 85.4% on time across 134 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 134 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 OKC to PHX
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.99% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 2pm–5pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 130 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OKC to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to OKC, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on OKC to PHX82.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on OKC to PHX77.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.