Route reliability record
PHX→MRY
Phoenix to Monterey
- Flights
- 1,374
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 598 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, about a point 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 a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,374 PHX to MRY flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to MRY: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.7%, against 78.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,350 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.09%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
78.1% on time across 887 flights
These figures cover 1,374 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to MRY
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 221 | 86.1% | 38 min | 1.81% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 887 | 78.1% | 74 min | 0.79% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 266 | 75.7% | 74 min | 1.50% | B |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Monterey
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. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → MRYPhoenix to Monterey | SkyWest Airlines | 77.5% | 78.1% | 0.79% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. PHX → SJCPhoenix to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 77.4% | 77.7% | 0.38% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. PHX → SJCPhoenix to San Jose | American Airlines | 75.9% | 76.5% | 0.78% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 17 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–8am142 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am282 flights81.7%
- 11am–2pm244 flights71.3%
- 2pm–5pm289 flights82.5%
- 5pm–8pm196 flights77.6%
- 8pm–5am221 flights73.5%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 71.3% on time against 88.7% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 289 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
July is the worst month at 70.8% on time, 13 points below December, the best at 83.8%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 132 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.9%. 9 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. Carrier accounts for 57% of the 20,000 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.
- 57%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, 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 11,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,044 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 88.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.09% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.66%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.6% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 598 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 81.7% on time across 1,375 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,374 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 MRY 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. December runs 83.8% on time and July 70.8%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,350 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to MRY questions
How often is PHX to MRY 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 21.1% of the 1,374 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is PHX to MRY compared with the rest of the country?
78.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point 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 MRY?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 17 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 July delays on PHX to MRY?
July is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 83.8% in December. Across the year that is 13 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
- MRY to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PHX to MRY86.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to MRY78.1%
- American Airlines on PHX to MRY75.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- LAX to MRY, a related route89.9%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record78.1%
- American Airlines on-time record75.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to MRY and MRY 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.