Carrier route record

AAOKC→PHX

American Airlines · Oklahoma City to Phoenix

Flights: 130
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 130 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 886 at 83.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, American's OKC to PHX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 126 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

3.08%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.0%

Every carrier on OKC to PHX, 1,859 flights

These figures cover 130 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on OKC to PHX

American flew 130 of the 1,859 flights on OKC to PHX, about 7% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 86.5% to SkyWest at 75.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on OKC to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)thin 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.

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 130 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm37 flights91.2%
5pm–8pm93 flights84.8%
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 84.8%. 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 93 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—

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 86.5% on time across 130 flights.

Split by quarter, American on OKC to PHX logged 33 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 92 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 5 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 1,076 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
9%
Extreme weather
1%

51% 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 1,076 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 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 1,076 reported delay minutes.

38% 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 1,076, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 3.08%, against 1.81% 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 runs 85.7% on time across 130 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. 130 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 3.08% 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. 126 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures