Carrier route record

AAPHX→ABQ

American Airlines · Phoenix to Albuquerque

Flights: 559
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on PHX to ABQ 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 559 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 685 at 85.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, American's PHX to ABQ record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 554 completed flights

Avg delay

91 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.89%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.0%

Every carrier on PHX to ABQ, 3,311 flights

These figures cover 559 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on PHX to ABQ

American flew 559 of the 3,311 flights on PHX to ABQ, about 17% of it. Its 81.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.5% to Southwest at 75.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to ABQ
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 (this page)	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

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 559 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am163 flights87.7%
11am–2pm90 flights82.0%
2pm–5pm132 flights82.4%
5pm–8pm27 flights—
8pm–5am147 flights77.8%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 87.7% of the time, against 77.8% for the overnight window. That is 10 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 163 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on PHX to ABQ through the year

Jul–Sep 2025212 flights83.9%
Oct–Dec 2025168 flights78.6%
Jan–Mar 202670 flights89.4%
Apr–Jun 2026109 flights77.1%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 81.6% on time across 559 flights.

American on PHX to ABQ did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 89.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 77.1%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 140 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 21 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 9,312 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
44%
National Airspace System
2%

54% 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 9,312 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 54 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 9,312 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 4,131 of the 9,312 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, 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

8.8% 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 an hour and a half, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 79.7% on time across 558 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 559 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 American on PHX to ABQ

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 559 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 554 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures