Carrier route record

F9PHX→LAX

Frontier Airlines · Phoenix to Los Angeles

Flights: 489
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 7

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

Frontier on PHX to LAX lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 489 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 2,590 at 90.2% on time.

SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 90.2% on time across 2,590 flights.

On time

83.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 484 completed flights

Avg delay

86 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.8%

Every carrier on PHX to LAX, 7,598 flights

These figures cover 489 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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

Frontier against every carrier on PHX to LAX

Frontier flew 489 of the 7,598 flights on PHX to LAX, about 6% of it. Its 83.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Southwest at 72.6%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 90.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 72.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,007 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	5	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	142	95.0%	185 min	0.70%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	2,590	90.2%	67 min	0.73%	A+
United Airlinesthin sample	339	87.8%	104 min	0.59%	A+
Frontier Airlines (this page)	489	83.1%	86 min	1.02%	B
American Airlines	2,026	81.7%	63 min	0.54%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,007	72.6%	49 min	0.55%	C+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Frontier 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 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am108 flights93.5%
8am–11am59 flights88.1%
11am–2pm99 flights79.6%
2pm–5pm92 flights85.6%
5pm–8pm101 flights76.2%
8pm–5am30 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 76.2% for the evening 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 108 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on PHX to LAX through the year

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

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 73.5%. February is the strongest month at 93.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. March was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.8%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 7,012 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
47%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
19%

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 7,012 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 7,012 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 2,409 of the 7,012 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

6.8% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 370 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 74.6% on time across 488 flights, 9 points below 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 489 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 Frontier on PHX to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 489 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 83.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 484 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