Route reliability record
PHX→ELP
Phoenix to El Paso
- Flights
- 2,498
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 347 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,498 flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 851 at 80.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,480 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.68%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.0% on time across 851 flights
These figures cover 2,498 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to ELP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 318 | 85.4% | 58 min | 0.63% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 851 | 80.0% | 82 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 79.0% | 76 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,210 | 74.7% | 47 min | 0.66% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 80.0%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 29 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am50 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am665 flights89.1%
- 11am–2pm472 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm417 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm487 flights71.0%
- 8pm–5am407 flights62.7%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.7% on time, against 92.0% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 665 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 60.6% on time, 28 points below January, the best at 88.6%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 237 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 83.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.1%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 33,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 45%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 33,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 32,689 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 15,000 of the 33,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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 actually costs
7.0% 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 are the about an hour kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 347 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.1% on time across 2,507 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,498 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 88.6% on time and June 60.6%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,480 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to ELP questions
How often is PHX to ELP delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.9% of the 2,498 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to ELP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 80.0% on time across 851 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 74.7%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to ELP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.7%, 29 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on PHX to ELP?
June is the weakest month at 60.6% on time, compared with 88.6% in January. Across the year that is 28 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- ELP to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record85.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- American Airlines on-time record79.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to ELP and ELP to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.