Carrier route record
WNPHX→CLE
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Cleveland
- Flights
- 371
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to CLE draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 371 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to CLE runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 98 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 370 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.7%
Every carrier on PHX to CLE, 957 flights
These figures cover 371 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to CLE
Southwest flew 371 of the 957 flights on PHX to CLE, about 39% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.3% to Southwest at 67.8%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlinesthin sample | 267 | 79.3% | 77 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 319 | 72.7% | 83 min | 1.88% | C |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 371 | 67.8% | 44 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 17 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–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am60 flights80.0%
- 11am–2pm163 flights62.6%
- 2pm–5pm112 flights68.5%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 62.6% on time against 80.0% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 163 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to CLE through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 84.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 39 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 76.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.8%. 21 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 47% of the 5,266 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
47% 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 5,266 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 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 5,266 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 2,106 of the 5,266 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,737 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.1% on time across 371 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 371 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.
What to do with this
Booking Southwest on PHX to CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 371 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 67.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 370 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to CLE, every carrier
- Southwest on CLE to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to CLE79.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to CLE72.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) 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.