Carrier route record
WNPDX→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Portland to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,274
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PDX to PHX sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,274 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,375 at 83.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PDX to PHX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,269 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.0%
Every carrier on PDX to PHX, 3,733 flights
These figures cover 1,274 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on PDX to PHX
Southwest flew 1,274 of the 3,733 flights on PDX to PHX, about 34% of it. Its 75.5% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.7% to Southwest at 75.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 86 | 90.7% | 151 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,375 | 83.8% | 48 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 94 | 80.4% | 122 min | 1.06% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 35 | 80.0% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 869 | 79.3% | 129 min | 1.04% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,274 | 75.5% | 50 min | 0.16% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 83.8%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 46 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am366 flights92.9%
- 8am–11am231 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm184 flights72.8%
- 2pm–5pm256 flights64.2%
- 5pm–8pm167 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am70 flights47.1%
Scale runs 40% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.1% on time, against 92.9% for the 5am–8am 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 366 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PDX to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 64.3% on time, 24 points below January, the best at 88.5%. 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 125 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 78.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.8%. 7 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 58% of the 16,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
58% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 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 15,571 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 92.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.16%, 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 costs
5.0% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,010 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 69.5% on time across 1,273 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,274 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 Southwest on PDX to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.5% on time and June 64.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,269 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to PDX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to PHX83.8%
- American Airlines on PDX to PHX79.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- 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.