Route reliability record
PHX→MKE
Phoenix to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 1,470
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,460 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,470 PHX to MKE flights, of which American Airlines flew 487 at 80.5% on time.
Best time to fly PHX to MKE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 76.7%, against 73.3% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 43 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
73.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,451 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
80.5% on time across 487 flights
These figures cover 1,470 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to MKE
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 80.5% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 979 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 487 | 80.5% | 66 min | 1.44% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 979 | 69.6% | 52 min | 0.61% | C+ |
American leads Southwest by 11 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Milwaukee
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → MKEPhoenix to Milwaukee | American Airlines | 79.3% | 80.5% | 1.44% | 5pm–8pm, Sat | — |
| 2. PHX → MKEPhoenix to Milwaukee | Southwest Airlines | 69.2% | 69.6% | 0.61% | 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 40 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am54 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am567 flights84.0%
- 11am–2pm120 flights71.7%
- 2pm–5pm289 flights62.3%
- 5pm–8pm341 flights68.7%
- 8pm–5am99 flights50.5%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.5% on time, against 90.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 567 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
June is the worst month at 64.2% on time, 17 points below February, the best at 81.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 164 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 76.7% on time and Monday the weakest at 69.3%. 7 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 21,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
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 21,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 21,489 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 7,798 of the 21,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.88%, 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 actually costs
6.7% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,460 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 1,471 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,470 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 MKE 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. February runs 81.4% on time and June 64.2%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,451 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to MKE questions
How often is PHX to MKE delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.7% of the 1,470 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 MKE?
American Airlines leads at 80.5% on time across 487 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 69.6%, a gap of 11 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 MKE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 50.5%, 40 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 MKE?
June is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 81.4% in February. Across the year that is 17 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
- MKE to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHX to MKE80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to MKE69.6%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- ORD to MKE, a related route64.1%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record80.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record69.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. PHX to MKE and MKE 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.