Carrier route record
WNPHX→MKE
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Milwaukee
- Flights
- 979
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to MKE sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 979 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to MKE runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 80 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 969 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.3%
Every carrier on PHX to MKE, 1,470 flights
These figures cover 979 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
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to MKE
Southwest flew 979 of the 1,470 flights on PHX to MKE, most of the route. Its 69.6% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 | 487 | 80.5% | 66 min | 1.44% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 979 | 69.6% | 52 min | 0.61% | C+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 43 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am53 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am273 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm116 flights71.6%
- 2pm–5pm195 flights53.7%
- 5pm–8pm268 flights65.0%
- 8pm–5am74 flights47.9%
Scale runs 40% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 47.9% on time, against 90.4% 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 273 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to MKE through the year
June is the worst month at 53.7% on time, 29 points below February, the best at 82.6%. 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 102 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 74.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 15,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
55% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 15,355 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.4% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
7.5% 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 roughly 50 minutes, 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 79.3% on time across 981 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 979 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 Southwest on PHX to MKE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 979 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 69.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 969 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to MKE, every carrier
- Southwest on MKE to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to MKE80.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.