Carrier route record
WNPHX→CMH
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Columbus
- Flights
- 556
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to CMH 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 556 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to CMH runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 549 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.2%
Every carrier on PHX to CMH, 1,168 flights
These figures cover 556 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 CMH
Southwest flew 556 of the 1,168 flights on PHX to CMH, about 48% of it. Its 66.3% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 79.4% to Southwest at 66.3%.
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 | 612 | 79.4% | 78 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 556 | 66.3% | 47 min | 0.90% | 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 23 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–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am156 flights77.8%
- 11am–2pm25 flights—
- 2pm–5pm83 flights70.7%
- 5pm–8pm267 flights54.9%
- 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: 54.9% on time, against 77.8% 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 267 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to CMH through the year
February is the weak month at 53.3% on time, against 79.6% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 66 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 53.8%. 25 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 57% of the 8,622 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
57% 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 8,622 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 8,622 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 77.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.36%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.8% 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 roughly 45 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 80.3% on time across 556 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 556 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. 556 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 66.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 549 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 CMH79.4%
- 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 7.04 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.