Carrier route record

OOPHX→SAN

SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to San Diego

Flights: 446
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on PHX to SAN sits in the middle of the pack with a C−. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 446 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.

On time

69.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 423 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

4.93%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

73.1%

Every carrier on PHX to SAN, 5,933 flights

These figures cover 446 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to SAN

SkyWest flew 446 of the 5,933 flights on PHX to SAN, about 8% of it. Its 69.3% on time is 4 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 73.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 three carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SAN
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	1,670	74.5%	64 min	0.72%	C+
Southwest Airlines	3,193	71.7%	50 min	1.03%	C
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	446	69.3%	53 min	4.93%	C−

No carrier stands out. Frontier tops the table at 76.5%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am69 flights84.4%
8am–11am41 flights68.6%
11am–2pm50 flights81.6%
2pm–5pm104 flights68.0%
5pm–8pm101 flights59.4%
8pm–5am81 flights63.2%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 59.4% on time, against 84.4% 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 104 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PHX to SAN through the year

Oct–Dec 2025107 flights57.9%
Jan–Mar 2026106 flights66.7%
Apr–Jun 2026233 flights75.1%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 69.3% on time across 446 flights.

SkyWest on PHX to SAN did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 75.1% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 57.9%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 149 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 50.0%. 38 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 6,869 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.

National Airspace System
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Carrier
16%
Extreme weather
4%

48% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,298 minutes out of 6,869, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,869 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 84.4% on time here.

Cancellations run at 4.93%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.7% 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 roughly 55 minutes, 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 runs 67.8% on time across 445 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 446 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 SkyWest on PHX to SAN

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 4.93% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 55 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 423 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