Carrier route record
AAPHX→SAN
American Airlines · Phoenix to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,670
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- 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 SAN 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 1,670 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Frontier Airlines, flew 406 at 76.5% on time.
Frontier Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.5% on time across 406 flights.
Key figures
On time
74.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,654 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
73.1%
Every carrier on PHX to SAN, 5,933 flights
These figures cover 1,670 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PHX to SAN
American flew 1,670 of the 5,933 flights on PHX to SAN, about 28% of it. Its 74.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 85.4% to SkyWest at 69.3%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Frontier Airlines arrives on time 76.5% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 69.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 446 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 85.4% | 56 min | 2.29% | A |
| Frontier Airlines | 406 | 76.5% | 83 min | 0.99% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,670 | 74.5% | 64 min | 0.72% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 3,193 | 71.7% | 50 min | 1.03% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 446 | 69.3% | 53 min | 4.93% | C− |
SkyWest Airlines cancels 4.9% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
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 29 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am222 flights90.1%
- 8am–11am360 flights82.6%
- 11am–2pm127 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm390 flights69.3%
- 5pm–8pm322 flights70.5%
- 8pm–5am249 flights61.4%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.4% on time, against 90.1% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 390 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHX to SAN through the year
June is the worst month at 64.6% on time, 21 points below February, the best at 85.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.5%. 20 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 54% of the 27,000 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.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
54% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 27,086 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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
8.2% 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 304 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 81.3% on time across 1,669 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,670 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 SAN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 85.2% on time and June 64.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,654 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to SAN, every carrier
- American on SAN to PHX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on PHX to SAN85.4%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to SAN76.5%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to SAN71.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to SAN69.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) 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.