Carrier route record
WNPHX→BUR
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Burbank
- Flights
- 2,179
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 70%
- 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 BUR lands a B+, 2 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 about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,179 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PHX to BUR from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,158 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on PHX to BUR, 3,127 flights
These figures cover 2,179 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
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to BUR
Southwest flew 2,179 of the 3,127 flights on PHX to BUR, most of the route. Its 79.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.2% to American at 67.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 352 | 85.2% | 49 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 525 | 79.8% | 86 min | 0.95% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 2,179 | 79.8% | 55 min | 0.78% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 71 | 67.6% | 82 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 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–8am329 flights93.8%
- 8am–11am498 flights89.7%
- 11am–2pm280 flights80.1%
- 2pm–5pm435 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm392 flights67.3%
- 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 93.8% 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 498 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to BUR through the year
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 70.1%. January is the strongest month at 88.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. March was the busiest month here, with 197 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.2%. 11 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 54% of the 24,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 23,894 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.78%, 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
5.9% 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 about 55 minutes, 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 85.4% on time across 2,168 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 2,179 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 BUR
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.8% on time and October 70.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 2,158 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to BUR, every carrier
- Southwest on BUR to PHX, the return leg
- Envoy Air on PHX to BUR85.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to BUR79.8%
- 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.