Route reliability record
OMA→PHX
Omaha to Phoenix
- Flights
- 2,007
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,037 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,007 OMA to PHX flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly OMA to PHX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.7% of the time and Friday flights 84.1%, against 81.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,993 completed flights
Avg delay
71 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.60%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.8% on time across 1,215 flights
These figures cover 2,007 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 OMA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 271 | 90.0% | 127 min | 0.37% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 252 | 83.9% | 97 min | 1.19% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 266 | 80.4% | 107 min | 0.38% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,215 | 79.8% | 53 min | 0.58% | B+ |
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 32 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–8am631 flights90.9%
- 8am–11am142 flights93.7%
- 11am–2pm152 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm552 flights80.4%
- 5pm–8pm351 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am179 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 93.7% for the 8am–11am 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 631 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
June is the worst month at 66.0% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 89.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 187 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.1%. 6 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 49% of the 26,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 26,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 25,715 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 9,247 of the 26,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.60%, 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
5.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,037 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 77.4% on time across 2,006 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,007 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. September runs 89.7% on time and June 66.0%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,993 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OMA to PHX questions
How often is OMA to PHX delayed?
Roughly 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 18.2% of the 2,007 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is OMA to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
81.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OMA to PHX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.4%, 32 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 June delays on OMA to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 66.0% on time, compared with 89.7% in September. Across the year that is 24 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 OMA — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on OMA to PHX90.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on OMA to PHX83.9%
- American Airlines on OMA to PHX80.4%
- Southwest Airlines on OMA to PHX79.8%
- OMA to DEN, a related route76.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- OMA to ORD, a related route74.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record90.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record83.9%
- 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. OMA to PHX and PHX to OMA 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.