Route reliability record

PHX→BUR

Phoenix to Burbank

Flights: 3,127
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 369 mi
Carriers: 4

This route lands a B+, 3 points 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 3,127 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 525 at 79.8% on time.

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.

On time

80.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,089 completed flights

Avg delay

61 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.77%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

SkyWest

79.8% on time across 525 flights

These figures cover 3,127 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 BUR

The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to BUR
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	352	85.2%	49 min	0.57%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	525	79.8%	86 min	0.95%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,179	79.8%	55 min	0.78%	B+
American Airlinesthin sample	71	67.6%	82 min	0.00%	C+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 79.8%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 32 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–8am480 flights93.1%
8am–11am692 flights88.9%
11am–2pm424 flights78.3%
2pm–5pm725 flights79.3%
5pm–8pm561 flights69.1%
8pm–5am245 flights61.5%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.5% on time, against 93.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 725 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 15 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, October worst

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 71.2%. January is the strongest month at 85.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 15 points. March was the busiest month here, with 288 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.4%. 13 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 52% of the 37,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
0%

52% 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 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 37,261 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 13,000 of the 37,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, 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

6.4% 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 369 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 83.6% on time across 3,116 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 3,127 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. January runs 85.8% on time and October 71.2%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 3,089 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

PHX to BUR questions

How often is PHX to BUR 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 19.8% of the 3,127 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 BUR?

SkyWest Airlines leads at 79.8% on time across 525 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 79.8%, a gap of half 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 BUR?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.5%, 32 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 October delays on PHX to BUR?

October is the weakest month at 71.2% on time, compared with 85.8% in January. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. PHX to BUR and BUR 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.

Key figures