Route reliability record
PHX→OMA
Phoenix to Omaha
- Flights
- 2,006
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,037 mi
- Carriers
- 5
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 2,006 PHX to OMA flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to OMA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.2%, against 77.4% 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
77.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,991 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
74.5% on time across 1,214 flights
These figures cover 2,006 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 OMA
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 | 3 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 252 | 86.5% | 78 min | 0.40% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 272 | 84.1% | 47 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 265 | 74.8% | 60 min | 0.38% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,214 | 74.5% | 53 min | 0.66% | C+ |
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 31 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–8am55 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am615 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm336 flights77.7%
- 2pm–5pm287 flights71.6%
- 5pm–8pm495 flights71.3%
- 8pm–5am218 flights63.4%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.4% on time, against 94.4% 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 615 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 71.3% on time, 15 points below February, the best at 86.4%. 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 187 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.8%. 6 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 51% of the 25,000 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.
- 51%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
51% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 51 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 24,800 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 9,444 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
6.1% 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 1,037 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 81.8% on time across 2,007 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,006 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 OMA 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 86.4% on time and July 71.3%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,991 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to OMA questions
How often is PHX to OMA delayed?
Roughly 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 22.6% of the 2,006 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PHX to OMA compared with the rest of the country?
77.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to OMA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.4%, 31 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 OMA?
July is the weakest month at 71.3% on time, compared with 86.4% in February. Across the year that is 15 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
- OMA to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to OMA86.5%
- Envoy Air on PHX to OMA84.1%
- American Airlines on PHX to OMA74.8%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to OMA74.5%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- DEN to OMA, a related route75.8%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record100.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record84.1%
- 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 OMA and OMA 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.