Carrier route record

UAPHX→LAX

United Airlines · Phoenix to Los Angeles

Flights: 339
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 7

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

United 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 339 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 four carriers covered here at 90.2% on time across 2,590 flights.

On time

87.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 337 completed flights

Avg delay

104 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.59%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.8%

Every carrier on PHX to LAX, 7,598 flights

These figures cover 339 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

United against every carrier on PHX to LAX

United flew 339 of the 7,598 flights on PHX to LAX, about 4% of it. Its 87.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Southwest at 72.6%. Two 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 Airlines (this page)thin 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+

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 United 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 339 flights.

5am–8am71 flights94.4%
8am–11am96 flights87.4%
11am–2pm7 flights—
2pm–5pm89 flights87.5%
5pm–8pm57 flights87.7%
8pm–5am19 flights—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 94.4% on time for the 5am–8am window against 87.4% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 96 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on PHX to LAX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025143 flights92.3%
Oct–Dec 202577 flights80.5%
Jan–Mar 202672 flights84.5%
Apr–Jun 202647 flights91.3%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 87.8% on time across 339 flights.

United on PHX to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 92.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 80.5%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 85 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 52% of the 4,276 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
52%
Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
7%

41% 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 4,276 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 4,276 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 2,222 of the 4,276 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.59%, 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 4.7% 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 runs 86.6% on time across 339 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 339 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 United on PHX to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 339 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 87.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 337 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