Carrier route record
WNPHX→ABQ
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Albuquerque
- Flights
- 1,880
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to ABQ 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 roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,880 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 685 at 85.5% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PHX to ABQ from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
75.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,876 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.0%
Every carrier on PHX to ABQ, 3,311 flights
These figures cover 1,880 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to ABQ
Southwest flew 1,880 of the 3,311 flights on PHX to ABQ, most of the route. Its 75.6% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 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 (this page) | 1,880 | 75.6% | 49 min | 0.21% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 85.5%, 4 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 36 points, against 4 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–11am364 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm417 flights80.2%
- 2pm–5pm402 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm294 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am310 flights59.7%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.7% on time, against 95.7% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 417 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to ABQ through the year
June is the worst month at 53.0% on time, 35 points below February, the best at 88.2%. 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 180 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.4%. 15 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 61% of the 22,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 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 22,229 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 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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
6.2% 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 roughly 50 minutes, 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 81.5% on time across 1,884 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,880 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 PHX to ABQ
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 88.2% on time and June 53.0%, a swing of 35 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,876 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to ABQ, every carrier
- Southwest on ABQ to PHX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to ABQ85.5%
- Envoy Air on PHX to ABQ82.3%
- American Airlines on PHX to ABQ81.6%
- Southwest 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.