Route reliability record
PHX→SBA
Phoenix to Santa Barbara
- Flights
- 1,432
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 455 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,432 PHX to SBA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 384 at 82.2% on time.
Best time to fly PHX to SBA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.4%, against 80.8% 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
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,410 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.2% on time across 384 flights
These figures cover 1,432 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to SBA
The two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 91.7% | 84 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 359 | 85.6% | 56 min | 1.11% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 384 | 82.2% | 76 min | 1.56% | B |
| American Airlines | 677 | 77.2% | 95 min | 1.18% | B |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 82.2%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Phoenix to Santa Barbara
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PHX → SBAPhoenix to Santa Barbara | SkyWest Airlines | 80.9% | 82.2% | 1.56% | 8pm–5am, Sat | — |
| 2. PHX → SBAPhoenix to Santa Barbara | American Airlines | 76.3% | 77.2% | 1.18% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am64 flights90.6%
- 8am–11am315 flights87.4%
- 11am–2pm183 flights82.2%
- 2pm–5pm422 flights79.9%
- 5pm–8pm197 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am251 flights72.7%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.6% of the time, against 72.7% for the overnight window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 422 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
July is the worst month at 69.0% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 87.3%. 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 146 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 74.6%. 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. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 22,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
36% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 22,458 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 11,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.5% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 455 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 84.4% on time across 1,432 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 1,432 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SBA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 87.3% on time and July 69.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,410 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to SBA questions
How often is PHX to SBA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.2% of the 1,432 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to SBA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 82.2% on time across 384 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 77.2%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to SBA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 72.7%, 18 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 July delays on PHX to SBA?
July is the weakest month at 69.0% on time, compared with 87.3% in April. Across the year that is 18 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
- SBA to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PHX to SBA85.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to SBA82.2%
- American Airlines on PHX to SBA77.2%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- SFO to SBA, a related route80.1%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record91.7%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to SBA and SBA 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.