Carrier route record
AAPHX→MKE
American Airlines · Phoenix to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 487
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHX to MKE lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 487 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on PHX to MKE from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 478 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.44%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on PHX to MKE, 1,470 flights
These figures cover 487 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
American against every carrier on PHX to MKE
American flew 487 of the 1,470 flights on PHX to MKE, about 33% of it. Its 80.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 100.0% to Southwest at 69.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 487 | 80.5% | 66 min | 1.44% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 979 | 69.6% | 52 min | 0.61% | C+ |
Departure window
When American 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 487 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am294 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm94 flights80.2%
- 5pm–8pm73 flights82.2%
- 8pm–5am25 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is the strongest at 82.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
American on PHX to MKE through the year
January is the weak month at 68.9% on time, against 90.0% in July. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 6,134 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
46% 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 6,134 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 6,134 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 2,594 of the 6,134 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.44% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.41%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.0% 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 runs 77.9% on time across 486 flights, within 3 points 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. 487 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 American on PHX to MKE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 487 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 80.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 478 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to MKE, every carrier
- American on MKE to PHX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to MKE69.6%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.