Route reliability record

PHX→LAS

Phoenix to Las Vegas

Flights: 6,021
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Distance: 255 mi
Carriers: 6

This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About 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 6,021 flights, of which Frontier Airlines flew 861 at 82.7% on time.

Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.7% on time across 861 flights.

On time

78.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 5,957 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.96%

National rate is 1.81%

Best carrier

Frontier

82.7% on time across 861 flights

These figures cover 6,021 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 LAS

The three 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 LAS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	6	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	4	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	16	93.8%	90 min	0.00%	A+
Frontier Airlines	861	82.7%	108 min	1.05%	B
American Airlines	1,687	79.1%	67 min	0.83%	B+
Southwest Airlines	3,447	77.3%	51 min	1.02%	B

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 82.7%, 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 28 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am883 flights94.8%
8am–11am1,200 flights87.1%
11am–2pm1,088 flights80.3%
2pm–5pm888 flights69.8%
5pm–8pm867 flights66.4%
8pm–5am1,095 flights71.7%

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.8% of the time, against 66.4% for the evening window. That is 28 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 1,200 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

When delays peak on this route

This route's year swings by 15 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.

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, June worst

June is the worst month at 70.8% on time, 15 points below February, the best at 85.4%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 547 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.2%. 12 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 52% of the 78,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
29%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

52% 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 78,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 78,225 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here actually costs

6.9% 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 255 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 runs 78.2% on time across 6,025 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 6,021 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. February runs 85.4% on time and June 70.8%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 5,957 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Common questions

PHX to LAS questions

How often is PHX to LAS delayed?

About 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 21.3% of the 6,021 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 LAS?

Frontier Airlines leads at 82.7% on time across 861 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 77.3%, 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 LAS?

The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.4%, 28 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 LAS?

June is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 85.4% in February. Across the year that is 15 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Direction matters. PHX to LAS and LAS 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.

Key figures