Carrier route record

AAPHX→SEA

American Airlines · Phoenix to Seattle

Flights: 224
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 7

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

American on PHX to SEA lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 224 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 761 at 87.6% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 87.6% on time across 761 flights.

On time

82.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 223 completed flights

Avg delay

63 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.45%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

82.2%

Every carrier on PHX to SEA, 7,202 flights

These figures cover 224 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on PHX to SEA

American flew 224 of the 7,202 flights on PHX to SEA, about 3% of it. Its 82.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number six of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 87.6% to Southwest at 62.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 87.6% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 62.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,039 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	761	87.6%	50 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,767	87.5%	75 min	0.96%	A+
Alaska Airlines	2,886	84.4%	56 min	0.76%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	116	83.6%	83 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	409	83.0%	63 min	0.49%	B+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	224	82.5%	63 min	0.45%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,039	62.2%	45 min	0.77%	D+

The spread between Envoy and Southwest is 25 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 25 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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Departure window

When American 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 224 flights.

5am–8am22 flights—
8am–11am63 flights87.3%
11am–2pm137 flights82.4%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm1 flights—
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: 87.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.4% for 11am–2pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 137 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on PHX to SEA through the year

Oct–Dec 202581 flights77.8%
Jan–Mar 202680 flights78.5%
Apr–Jun 202636 flights100.0%
Jul–Sep 202627 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 82.5% on time across 224 flights.

American on PHX to SEA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 77.8%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 75 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 97.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 69.7%, a spread of 27 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on PHX to SEA runs when it is late

American on PHX to SEA often beats the schedule: 69 of 223 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 39 late arrivals split 18 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.

15+ min early69 flights30.9%
Within 15 min115 flights51.6%
15–29 min late18 flights8.1%
30–59 min late10 flights4.5%
1–2 hours late4 flights1.8%
2+ hours late7 flights3.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 223 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

6 of 26 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 23% of them. In the other direction, 19 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SEA.

The worst days

Worst days for American on PHX to SEA

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 August 2026, 6 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on PHX to SEA in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 August 2026	6 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 December 2025	3 hours 45 minutes	Carrier
16 March 2026	2 hours 56 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 November 2025	2 hours 23 minutes	Carrier
19 November 2025	2 hours 9 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 2,442 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
34%
National Airspace System
21%

45% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,442 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 45 to one. The split is drawn from 2,442 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 87.3% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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 4.9% 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.

The 1,107 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.

The return leg runs 83.2% on time across 221 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. 224 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 American on PHX to SEA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 224 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 223 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