Carrier route record

WNPHX→RNO

Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Reno

Flights: 961
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 40%
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 RNO 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 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 961 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PHX to RNO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

74.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 958 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.31%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.2%

Every carrier on PHX to RNO, 2,416 flights

These figures cover 961 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 RNO

Southwest flew 961 of the 2,416 flights on PHX to RNO, about 40% of it. Its 74.8% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to RNO
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	1,186	82.4%	70 min	0.76%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	40	82.1%	86 min	2.50%	B
Southwest Airlines (this page)	961	74.8%	46 min	0.31%	C+

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 25 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–8am13 flights—
8am–11am332 flights88.9%
11am–2pm56 flights78.2%
2pm–5pm171 flights64.1%
5pm–8pm75 flights68.0%
8pm–5am314 flights66.1%

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

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 64.1% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 332 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PHX to RNO through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 59.8%. January is the strongest month at 88.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.9%. 12 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 59% of the 11,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
59%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
1%

59% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 10,978 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 3,855 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

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 84.7% on time across 961 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. 961 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 RNO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 961 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 74.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 958 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