Carrier route record
AAPHX→ONT
American Airlines · Phoenix to Ontario
- Flights
- 1,315
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHX to ONT 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 1,315 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on PHX to ONT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,303 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.7%
Every carrier on PHX to ONT, 3,059 flights
These figures cover 1,315 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 ONT
American flew 1,315 of the 3,059 flights on PHX to ONT, about 43% of it. Its 80.4% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 91.1% to Southwest at 74.4%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 91 | 91.1% | 60 min | 1.10% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 45 | 91.1% | 37 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,315 | 80.4% | 67 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,608 | 74.4% | 49 min | 0.19% | C+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on PHX to ONT
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 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–8am40 flights97.5%
- 8am–11am383 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm124 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm198 flights79.2%
- 5pm–8pm332 flights76.0%
- 8pm–5am238 flights74.3%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.5% of the time, against 74.3% for the overnight window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 383 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHX to ONT through the year
July is the worst month at 74.7% on time, 10 points below May, the best at 85.1%. 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.8%. 11 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 61% of the 17,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
61% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 61 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 17,101 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 5,854 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.3% 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.
At 325 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.8% on time across 1,315 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,315 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PHX to ONT
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 74.3% on time against 97.5% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 23 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,303 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to ONT, every carrier
- American on ONT to PHX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to ONT74.4%
- American 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.