Route reliability record
PHX→GEG
Phoenix to Spokane
- Flights
- 1,235
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,020 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,235 PHX to GEG flights, of which American Airlines flew 577 at 76.1% on time.
Best time to fly PHX to GEG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.6%, against 75.5% for the route overall.
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
75.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,231 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.16%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
76.1% on time across 577 flights
These figures cover 1,235 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 GEG
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 577 | 76.1% | 73 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 603 | 75.6% | 39 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 10 | 70.0% | 47 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 45 | 68.9% | 79 min | 0.00% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 76.1%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Spokane
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → GEGPhoenix to Spokane | American Airlines | 76.1% | 76.1% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 2. PHX → GEGPhoenix to Spokane | Southwest Airlines | 75.4% | 75.6% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 27 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–8am10 flights—
- 8am–11am290 flights83.0%
- 11am–2pm432 flights77.1%
- 2pm–5pm118 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm36 flights55.6%
- 8pm–5am349 flights69.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 55.6% on time, against 83.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 432 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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 63.6% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 86.8%. 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 131 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.9%. 13 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 53% of the 17,000 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
53% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 17,098 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 6,472 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.16%, 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
7.4% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,020 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.1% on time across 1,235 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,235 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in GEG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 86.8% on time and June 63.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,231 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to GEG questions
How often is PHX to GEG delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 24.5% of the 1,235 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 GEG?
American Airlines leads at 76.1% on time across 577 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.6%, a gap of half a point. 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 GEG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 55.6%, 27 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 GEG?
June is the weakest month at 63.6% on time, compared with 86.8% in February. Across the year that is 23 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
- GEG to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHX to GEG76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to GEG75.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SEA to GEG, a related route82.5%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record75.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record70.0%
- 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 GEG and GEG to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.