Carrier route record

WNPHX→MSP

Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Minneapolis

Flights: 284
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 9%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on PHX to MSP sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 50 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 284 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 2,073 at 86.2% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to MSP runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.

On time

72.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 278 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.41%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.5%

Every carrier on PHX to MSP, 3,080 flights

These figures cover 284 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 MSP

Southwest flew 284 of the 3,080 flights on PHX to MSP, about 9% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 86.2% to Envoy at 50.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 86.2% of the time; American Airlines manages 79.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 647 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	2,073	86.2%	85 min	0.68%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	74	82.2%	60 min	1.35%	B
American Airlines	647	79.8%	76 min	1.08%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin sample	284	72.7%	52 min	1.41%	C
Envoy Airthin sample	2	50.0%	90 min	0.00%	F+

Delta leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 27 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am9 flights—
8am–11am74 flights89.0%
11am–2pm40 flights82.1%
2pm–5pm38 flights65.8%
5pm–8pm117 flights61.9%
8pm–5am6 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.9% on time, against 89.0% for the 8am–11am 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 117 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PHX to MSP through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights65.2%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights78.9%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights69.9%
Apr–Jun 202616 flights—

Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 72.7% on time across 284 flights.

Southwest on PHX to MSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 78.9% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 65.2%, a swing of 14 points on roughly 95 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.6% on time and Thursday the weakest at 60.0%. 21 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 54% of the 3,925 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
54%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

54% 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 3,925 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 3,925 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.70%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 1,276 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 88.3% on time across 284 flights, 16 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 16 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 284 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 MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 284 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 72.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 278 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures