Carrier route record
WNOKC→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Oklahoma City to Phoenix
- Flights
- 886
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on OKC to PHX lands a B, 6 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 886 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's OKC to PHX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 876 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.02%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.0%
Every carrier on OKC to PHX, 1,859 flights
These figures cover 886 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Southwest against every carrier on OKC to PHX
Southwest flew 886 of the 1,859 flights on OKC to PHX, about 48% of it. Its 83.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 86.5% to SkyWest at 75.1%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 130 | 86.5% | 63 min | 3.08% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 886 | 83.8% | 61 min | 1.02% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 843 | 75.1% | 99 min | 0.59% | B+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 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–8am286 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am60 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm85 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm112 flights77.1%
- 5pm–8pm218 flights77.2%
- 8pm–5am125 flights70.4%
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 70.4% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 286 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on OKC to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 70.5% on time, 22 points below September, the best at 92.9%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 87 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.6%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 8,618 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
69% 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 8,618 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 8,618 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 96.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.9% on time across 886 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 886 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 Southwest on OKC to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 886 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 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 876 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OKC to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to OKC, the return leg
- American Airlines on OKC to PHX86.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on OKC to PHX75.1%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.