Route reliability record
PHX→LGB
Phoenix to Long Beach
- Flights
- 1,516
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 355 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That rests on 1,516 PHX to LGB flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to LGB: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 85.1%, against 79.2% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,508 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.2% on time across 1,516 flights
These figures cover 1,516 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to LGB
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,516 | 79.2% | 42 min | 0.53% | B+ |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Long Beach
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 5 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → LAXPhoenix to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 89.4% | 90.0% | 0.71% | 5am–8am, Tue | OO 4119 10:45 |
| 2. PHX → BURPhoenix to Burbank | Envoy Air | 83.9% | 84.4% | 0.55% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 3. PHX → LAXPhoenix to Los Angeles | American Airlines | 81.3% | 81.7% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 4. PHX → LAXPhoenix to Los Angeles | Frontier Airlines | 81.0% | 82.0% | 1.20% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 5. PHX → ONTPhoenix to Ontario | American Airlines | 79.2% | 79.9% | 0.84% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
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 26 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am28 flights—
- 8am–11am356 flights92.4%
- 11am–2pm339 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm327 flights73.2%
- 5pm–8pm359 flights69.7%
- 8pm–5am107 flights66.7%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.4% of the time, against 66.7% for the overnight window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 359 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PHX to LGB by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PHX to LGB, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.4% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 66.7%, a wide gap of 25.7 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am92.4%
- 11am–2pm84.1%
- 2–5pm73.2%
- 5–8pm69.7%
- 8pm–5am66.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
December is the weak month at 70.6% on time, against 93.2% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 139 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 13,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 13,326 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,131 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, below the national 1.89% 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 355 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 80.0% on time across 1,515 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,516 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 LGB 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. September runs 93.2% on time and December 70.6%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,508 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to LGB questions
How often is PHX to LGB delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.8% of the 1,516 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average.
How reliable is PHX to LGB compared with the rest of the country?
79.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to LGB?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.7%, 26 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 December delays on PHX to LGB?
December is the weakest month at 70.6% on time, compared with 93.2% in September. 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
- LGB to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- PHX to DEN, a related route76.7%
- LAS to LGB, a related route76.2%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to LGB and LGB 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.