Carrier route record

OOPHX→LAX

SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to Los Angeles

Flights: 2,590
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 34%
Carriers: 7

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

SkyWest on PHX to LAX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 2,590 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 489 at 83.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PHX to LAX record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,570 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.73%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.8%

Every carrier on PHX to LAX, 7,598 flights

These figures cover 2,590 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to LAX

SkyWest flew 2,590 of the 7,598 flights on PHX to LAX, about 34% of it. Its 90.2% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 83.1% 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 (this page)	2,590	90.2%	67 min	0.73%	A+
United Airlinesthin sample	339	87.8%	104 min	0.59%	A+
Frontier Airlines	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+

Frontier leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on PHX to LAX

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am514 flights96.1%
8am–11am527 flights89.7%
11am–2pm493 flights87.8%
2pm–5pm454 flights88.5%
5pm–8pm391 flights91.0%
8pm–5am211 flights84.8%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 84.8% for the overnight window. That is 11 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 527 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PHX to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.July best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 86.2%. July is the strongest month at 95.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 9 points. May was the busiest month here, with 251 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 94.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 86.1%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 57% 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.

Carrier
57%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
15%
Late-arriving aircraft
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 16,764 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 9,549 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 87.2% on time across 2,590 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,590 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 SkyWest on PHX to LAX

Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 84.8% on time against 96.1% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 11 points is the largest single thing you control here. Frontier Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,570 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