Carrier route record

MQPHX→SBA

Envoy Air · Phoenix to Santa Barbara

Flights: 366
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 26%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Envoy Air.

Envoy on PHX to SBA earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 366 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 408 at 82.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's PHX to SBA record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 108 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

82.2%

Every carrier on PHX to SBA, 1,432 flights

These figures cover 366 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Envoy against every carrier on PHX to SBA

Envoy flew 366 of the 1,432 flights on PHX to SBA, about 26% of it. Its 88.1% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 88.1% to American at 78.5%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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 SBA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)	366	88.1%	64 min	0.82%	A+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	8	87.5%	84 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	408	82.7%	68 min	0.98%	B+
American Airlines	650	78.5%	84 min	1.08%	B

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 82.7%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 366 flights.

5am–8am84 flights88.1%
8am–11am145 flights91.7%
11am–2pm26 flights—
2pm–5pm110 flights84.0%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 91.7% on time for the 8am–11am window against 84.0% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 145 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on PHX to SBA through the year

Jul–Sep 202528 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025130 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 202690 flights90.0%
Jul–Sep 202689 flights89.9%

Scale runs 80% to 95%. 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 88.1% on time across 366 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on PHX to SBA held fairly steady: 88.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 90.0% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 89.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 2 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.1%, a spread of 10 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Envoy on PHX to SBA runs when it is late

The 43 late arrivals split 14 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 15 an hour or more.

15+ min early61 flights16.9%
Within 15 min258 flights71.3%
15–29 min late14 flights3.9%
30–59 min late14 flights3.9%
1–2 hours late10 flights2.8%
2+ hours late5 flights1.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 362 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

7 of 44 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 16% of them. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Envoy on PHX to SBA

The latest arrival of the period was on 4 January 2026, 4 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across January, June, December and August, with no single month standing out.

The latest arrivals of Envoy on PHX to SBA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
4 January 2026	4 hours 12 minutes	Extreme weather
20 June 2026	3 hours 42 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
26 December 2025	3 hours 11 minutes	National Airspace System
26 August 2026	3 hours 5 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 August 2026	2 hours 4 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,746 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
National Airspace System
21%
Carrier
20%
Extreme weather
6%

52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,746 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 2,746 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.7% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, below the national 1.89% 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 4.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.

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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 86.8% on time across 367 flights, within about a point 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. 366 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 Envoy on PHX to SBA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 366 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 88.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures