Carrier route record
AAPHX→DEN
American Airlines · Phoenix to Denver
- Flights
- 974
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHX to DEN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 974 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 2,370 at 83.5% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 83.5% on time across 2,370 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 966 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.2%
Every carrier on PHX to DEN, 8,920 flights
These figures cover 974 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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
American against every carrier on PHX to DEN
American flew 974 of the 8,920 flights on PHX to DEN, about 11% of it. Its 74.8% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 83.5% to SkyWest at 66.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 83.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,942 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 2,370 | 83.5% | 75 min | 0.59% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 189 | 81.8% | 53 min | 0.53% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 1,427 | 80.0% | 88 min | 0.63% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 974 | 74.8% | 66 min | 0.62% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,942 | 72.8% | 56 min | 0.81% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 18 | 66.7% | 98 min | 0.00% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When American 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 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am318 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm193 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm179 flights66.9%
- 5pm–8pm145 flights68.8%
- 8pm–5am139 flights65.9%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 82.5% of the time, against 65.9% for the overnight window. That is 17 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 318 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHX to DEN through the year
July is the worst month at 53.9% on time, 34 points below April, the best at 87.9%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 103 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.4%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 16,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
50% 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 16,000 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 15,936 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 82.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 602 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 runs 76.9% on time across 972 flights, within 2 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. 974 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 American on PHX to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 974 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 74.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 966 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to DEN, every carrier
- American on DEN to PHX, the return leg
- United Airlines on PHX to DEN83.5%
- Envoy Air on PHX to DEN81.8%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to DEN80.0%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to DEN72.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.