Route reliability record
PHX→AUS
Phoenix to Austin
- Flights
- 3,358
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 872 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 3,358 PHX to AUS flights, of which American Airlines flew 1,224 at 74.5% on time.
Best time to fly PHX to AUS: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 79.1%, against 74.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,329 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
74.5% on time across 1,224 flights
These figures cover 3,358 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to AUS
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 87.3% | 66 min | 0.79% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 56 | 82.1% | 72 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,224 | 74.5% | 65 min | 0.82% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,950 | 73.4% | 48 min | 0.51% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 74.5%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Austin
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → AUSPhoenix to Austin | American Airlines | 73.9% | 74.5% | 0.82% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
| 2. PHX → AUSPhoenix to Austin | Southwest Airlines | 73.0% | 73.4% | 0.51% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 36 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am421 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am951 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm495 flights74.9%
- 2pm–5pm694 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm655 flights62.5%
- 8pm–5am142 flights61.0%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.0% on time, against 96.7% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 951 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PHX to AUS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PHX to AUS, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.7% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 61.0%, a wide gap of 35.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.7%
- 8–11am77.5%
- 11am–2pm74.9%
- 2–5pm70.7%
- 5–8pm62.5%
- 8pm–5am61.0%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 64.2% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 86.8%. 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 348 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 79.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 69.9%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 46,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 46,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 46,165 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 17,000 of the 46,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 872 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.0% on time across 3,410 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 3,358 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in AUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 86.8% on time and June 64.2%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 3,329 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to AUS questions
How often is PHX to AUS delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 25.5% of the 3,358 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to AUS?
American Airlines leads at 74.5% on time across 1,224 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 73.4%, a gap of about a point. 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 AUS?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.0%, 36 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 AUS?
June is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 86.8% in September. Across the year that is 23 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
- AUS to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Austin-Bergstrom International (AUS) delay statistics
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to AUS87.3%
- American Airlines on PHX to AUS74.5%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to AUS73.4%
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- DEN to AUS, a related route76.2%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.1%
- Envoy Air on-time record100.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record87.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to AUS and AUS to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.