Route reliability record
PHX→RDU
Phoenix to Raleigh
- Flights
- 811
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,891 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 811 PHX to RDU flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
Best time to fly PHX to RDU: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 78.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.1%, against 74.4% 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
74.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 802 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
76.1% on time across 489 flights
These figures cover 811 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to RDU
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 489 | 76.1% | 66 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 322 | 71.9% | 45 min | 1.24% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 811 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am227 flights78.0%
- 11am–2pm130 flights71.1%
- 2pm–5pm289 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm161 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 71.1% on time against 78.0% for 8am–11am. 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 23 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.
June is the worst month at 61.7% on time, 23 points below February, the best at 84.7%. 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 89 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 68.8%. 12 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 12,000 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
- 36%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
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 12,000 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 11,710 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 4,252 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.4% 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 1,891 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 84.0% on time across 811 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. 811 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in RDU after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 811 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 74.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 802 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to RDU questions
How often is PHX to RDU delayed?
About 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 25.6% of the 811 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is PHX to RDU compared with the rest of the country?
74.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to RDU?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 78.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 71.1%, 7 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 June delays on PHX to RDU?
June is the weakest month at 61.7% on time, compared with 84.7% in February. Across the year that is 23 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
- RDU to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- American Airlines on PHX to RDU76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to RDU71.9%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- ATL to RDU, a related route80.4%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- American Airlines on-time record76.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record71.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. PHX to RDU and RDU 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.