Route reliability record
PHX→ABQ
Phoenix to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 3,311
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 328 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrive 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 3,311 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 685 at 85.5% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.5% on time across 685 flights.
Key figures
On time
79.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,297 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
85.5% on time across 685 flights
These figures cover 3,311 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 PHX to ABQ
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,880 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 685 | 85.5% | 65 min | 0.58% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 187 | 82.3% | 44 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 559 | 81.6% | 91 min | 0.89% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,880 | 75.6% | 49 min | 0.21% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 27 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am93 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am728 flights89.8%
- 11am–2pm695 flights82.7%
- 2pm–5pm682 flights76.4%
- 5pm–8pm499 flights71.1%
- 8pm–5am614 flights68.9%
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 95.7% of the time, against 68.9% for the overnight window. That is 27 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 728 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 61.7% on time, 28 points below February, the best at 90.0%. 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 321 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.6%. 10 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 56% of the 39,000 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.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
56% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 39,435 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 15,000 of the 39,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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
6.0% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 328 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 3,317 flights, 3 points above 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 3,311 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 90.0% on time and June 61.7%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,297 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to ABQ questions
How often is PHX to ABQ delayed?
About one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.0% of the 3,311 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to ABQ?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 85.5% on time across 685 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.6%, a gap of 10 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to ABQ?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 68.9%, 27 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 PHX to ABQ?
June is the weakest month at 61.7% on time, compared with 90.0% in February. Across the year that is 28 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
- ABQ to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record85.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.3%
- American Airlines on-time record81.6%
- 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. PHX to ABQ and ABQ to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.