Carrier route record

AAPHX→ELP

American Airlines · Phoenix to El Paso

Flights: 119
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on PHX to ELP lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 119 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, 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 American on PHX to ELP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 119 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.1%

Every carrier on PHX to ELP, 2,498 flights

These figures cover 119 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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

American against every carrier on PHX to ELP

American flew 119 of the 2,498 flights on PHX to ELP, about 5% of it. Its 79.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.4% to Southwest at 74.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to ELP
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 Airlines (this page)thin 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

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 119 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm11 flights—
2pm–5pm55 flights76.4%
5pm–8pm43 flights79.1%
8pm–5am10 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 79.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

American on PHX to ELP through the year

Oct–Dec 202576 flights78.9%
Jan–Mar 202616 flights—
Apr–Jun 202627 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 79.0% on time across 119 flights.

Split by quarter, American on PHX to ELP logged 76 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 16 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 27 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 79.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 1,902 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
47%
National Airspace System
3%

47% 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 1,902 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 1,902 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 948 of the 1,902 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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

7.6% 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 a little over an hour, 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.9% on time across 119 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 119 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 ELP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 119 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 79.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 119 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures