Route reliability record
PHX→BFL
Phoenix to Bakersfield
- Flights
- 1,288
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 425 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,288 PHX to BFL flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to BFL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 98.0% of the time and Thursday flights 84.8%, against 80.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,259 completed flights
Avg delay
82 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
79.8% on time across 822 flights
These figures cover 1,288 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.6% 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to BFL
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 350 | 80.9% | 81 min | 1.14% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 822 | 79.8% | 87 min | 2.31% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 116 | 79.3% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am98 flights98.0%
- 8am–11am308 flights78.5%
- 11am–2pm159 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm261 flights80.1%
- 5pm–8pm221 flights75.7%
- 8pm–5am241 flights79.8%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 98.0% of the time, against 75.7% for the evening window. That is 22 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 308 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
January is the weak month at 72.1% on time, against 91.4% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 135 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 84.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 78.8%. 6 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. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 20,000 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 20,495 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.79% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.47%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 425 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 83.2% on time across 1,289 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 1,288 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 BFL 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. May runs 91.4% on time and January 72.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,259 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to BFL questions
How often is PHX to BFL delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.9% of the 1,288 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PHX to BFL compared with the rest of the country?
80.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to BFL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 98.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.7%, 22 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 January delays on PHX to BFL?
January is the weakest month at 72.1% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 19 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
- BFL to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHX to BFL80.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to BFL79.8%
- Envoy Air on PHX to BFL79.3%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- DEN to BFL, a related route78.2%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record79.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record79.3%
- 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 BFL and BFL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.