Route reliability record
PHX→CID
Phoenix to Cedar Rapids
- Flights
- 773
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,252 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 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 773 PHX to CID flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to CID: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.9%, against 78.2% 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
78.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 763 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
76.9% on time across 440 flights
These figures cover 773 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% 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 CID
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 | 261 | 81.5% | 52 min | 0.77% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 440 | 76.9% | 71 min | 1.36% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 72 | 74.6% | 61 min | 1.39% | C |
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 11 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–8am—
- 8am–11am354 flights83.3%
- 11am–2pm60 flights72.4%
- 2pm–5pm90 flights75.3%
- 5pm–8pm189 flights72.2%
- 8pm–5am80 flights77.6%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.3% of the time, against 72.2% for the evening window. That is 11 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 354 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 82 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.4%. 12 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 49% of the 11,000 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 12%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 12% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 10,661 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 5,222 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.16% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.0% 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 an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,252 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 772 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 773 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CID after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 773 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 763 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to CID questions
How often is PHX to CID delayed?
Roughly 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 21.8% of the 773 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PHX to CID compared with the rest of the country?
78.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point 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 CID?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.2%, 11 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 May delays on PHX to CID?
May is the weakest month at 65.6% on time, compared with 90.9% in September. Across the year that is 25 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
- CID to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PHX to CID81.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to CID76.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- ORD to CID, a related route67.8%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record81.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record76.9%
- American Airlines on-time record74.6%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. PHX to CID and CID to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed PHX to CID’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.