Carrier route record

MQPHX→SBA

Envoy Air · Phoenix to Santa Barbara

Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy on PHX to SBA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 359 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 384 at 82.2% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's PHX to SBA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 354 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.11%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.8%

Every carrier on PHX to SBA, 1,432 flights

These figures cover 359 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

Envoy against every carrier on PHX to SBA

Envoy flew 359 of the 1,432 flights on PHX to SBA, about 25% of it. Its 85.6% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 91.7% to American at 77.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SBA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	12	91.7%	84 min	0.00%	A+
Envoy Air (this page)thin 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.

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 359 flights.

5am–8am46 flights89.1%
8am–11am98 flights91.8%
11am–2pm26 flights—
2pm–5pm178 flights82.7%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am11 flights—

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

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 82.7% for the afternoon window. That is 9 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 178 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on PHX to SBA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025110 flights78.7%
Oct–Dec 2025130 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 202690 flights90.0%

Scale runs 70% 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 85.6% on time across 359 flights.

Envoy on PHX to SBA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.7%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 120 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 94.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 2,846 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
55%
National Airspace System
22%
Carrier
15%
Extreme weather
8%

55% 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 2,846 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 2,846 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 91.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.11% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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.

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 86.1% on time across 359 flights, within half 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. 359 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. 359 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 85.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 354 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