Carrier route record
AAPHX→RNO
American Airlines · Phoenix to Reno
- Flights
- 1,186
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 49%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHX to RNO lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six 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 1,186 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's PHX to RNO record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,173 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.76%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.2%
Every carrier on PHX to RNO, 2,416 flights
These figures cover 1,186 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 RNO
American flew 1,186 of the 2,416 flights on PHX to RNO, about 49% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Southwest at 74.8%. Three 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 | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 228 | 91.2% | 54 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,186 | 82.4% | 70 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 82.1% | 86 min | 2.50% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 961 | 74.8% | 46 min | 0.31% | C+ |
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 19 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–8am91 flights94.5%
- 8am–11am292 flights83.7%
- 11am–2pm218 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm153 flights84.8%
- 5pm–8pm180 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am252 flights75.3%
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 94.5% of the time, against 75.3% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 292 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHX to RNO through the year
June is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 90.7%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.4%. 8 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 52% of the 14,000 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
52% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 14,493 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 5,575 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.76%, 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 costs
6.6% 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 601 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 86.5% on time across 1,186 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 1,186 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 RNO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 90.7% on time and June 66.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,173 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to RNO, every carrier
- American on RNO to PHX, the return leg
- Envoy Air on PHX to RNO91.2%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to RNO74.8%
- 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.