Carrier route record
WNPHX→CLE
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Cleveland
- Flights
- 366
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 36%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 366 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on PHX to CLE runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 102 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on PHX to CLE, 1,012 flights
These figures cover 366 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to CLE
Southwest flew 366 of the 1,012 flights on PHX to CLE, about 36% of it. Its 67.1% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 77.3% to Southwest at 67.1%. 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 | 318 | 77.3% | 86 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 76.2% | 81 min | 1.83% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 366 | 67.1% | 44 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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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 18 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am17 flights—
- 8am–11am87 flights77.0%
- 11am–2pm140 flights58.6%
- 2pm–5pm103 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 58.6% on time against 77.0% 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 140 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 79.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 52.8%, a spread of 27 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on PHX to CLE runs when it is late
The 120 late arrivals split 58 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early24 flights6.6%
- Within 15 min221 flights60.5%
- 15–29 min late58 flights15.9%
- 30–59 min late43 flights11.8%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late7 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 365 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
39 of 140 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at CLE.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on PHX to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 September 2025, 6 hours 55 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 September 2025 | 6 hours 55 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 December 2025 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 July 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 December 2025 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 5,258 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,258 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 5,258 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,006 of the 5,258 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 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 runs 69.7% on time across 366 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 366 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. 366 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 67.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 365 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 CLE77.3%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to CLE76.2%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.