Carrier route record
WNPHX→CMH
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Columbus
- Flights
- 531
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to CMH draws a D+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about 50 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 531 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on PHX to CMH runs 13 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 134 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
63.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 524 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.94%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
70.6%
Every carrier on PHX to CMH, 1,140 flights
These figures cover 531 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to CMH
Southwest flew 531 of the 1,140 flights on PHX to CMH, about 47% of it. Its 63.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.5% to Southwest at 63.9%.
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 Airlines | 609 | 76.5% | 83 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 531 | 63.9% | 51 min | 0.94% | D+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am14 flights—
- 8am–11am145 flights77.5%
- 11am–2pm33 flights72.7%
- 2pm–5pm102 flights68.3%
- 5pm–8pm236 flights51.5%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.5% on time, against 77.5% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 236 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to CMH through the year
July is the worst month at 52.9% on time, 27 points below April, the best at 79.6%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 54.8%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on PHX to CMH runs when it is late
The 189 late arrivals split 77 under half an hour, 66 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 46 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early54 flights10.3%
- Within 15 min281 flights53.6%
- 15–29 min late77 flights14.7%
- 30–59 min late66 flights12.6%
- 1–2 hours late33 flights6.3%
- 2+ hours late13 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 524 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
45 of 202 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 32 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 CMH.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on PHX to CMH
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 July 2026, 5 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in July 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 July 2026 | 5 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 July 2026 | 4 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 July 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 May 2026 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 2 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 9,640 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
56% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,640 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 to one. The split is drawn from 9,640 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 77.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.38%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
8.8% 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 about 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,670 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 80.2% on time across 531 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 531 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 CMH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 531 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 63.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 524 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to CMH, every carrier
- Southwest on CMH to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to CMH76.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- John Glenn Columbus International (CMH) 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.