Carrier route record
AAONT→PHX
American Airlines · Ontario to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,315
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on ONT 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,315 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's ONT 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 1,302 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on ONT to PHX, 3,059 flights
These figures cover 1,315 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 ONT to PHX
American flew 1,315 of the 3,059 flights on ONT to PHX, about 43% of it. Its 83.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.9% to Southwest at 81.5%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 45 | 88.9% | 29 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 85.6% | 59 min | 1.10% | A |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,315 | 83.8% | 101 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,608 | 81.5% | 49 min | 0.37% | B+ |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 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–8am362 flights89.1%
- 8am–11am194 flights91.7%
- 11am–2pm362 flights83.4%
- 2pm–5pm124 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm239 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am34 flights70.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.7% of the time, against 69.9% for the afternoon window. That is 22 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 362 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on ONT to PHX through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 94.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.2%. 4 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 21,000 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%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 21,000 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 21,294 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 10,000 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.4% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 325 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.4% on time across 1,315 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 1,315 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on ONT to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 94.7% on time and November 77.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,302 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ONT to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to ONT, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on ONT to PHX81.5%
- American 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.