Carrier route record
AAPHX→SFO
American Airlines · Phoenix to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,312
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on PHX to SFO draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,312 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,489 at 67.7% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 67.7% on time across 1,489 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,300 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.6%
Every carrier on PHX to SFO, 4,728 flights
These figures cover 1,312 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 16.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on PHX to SFO
American flew 1,312 of the 4,728 flights on PHX to SFO, about 28% of it. Its 63.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Southwest at 57.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 67.7% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 57.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,076 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,489 | 67.7% | 59 min | 0.47% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 278 | 65.8% | 64 min | 1.08% | C |
| SkyWest Airlines | 572 | 63.7% | 67 min | 0.17% | D+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,312 | 63.2% | 77 min | 0.91% | D+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,076 | 57.7% | 56 min | 0.37% | D+ |
United leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am167 flights58.7%
- 11am–2pm272 flights68.9%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights61.9%
- 5pm–8pm351 flights69.1%
- 8pm–5am239 flights53.0%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.0% on time, against 69.1% for the 5pm–8pm 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 351 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on PHX to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 34.5% on time, 52 points below March, the best at 86.9%. 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 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 74.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on PHX to SFO runs when it is late
The 478 late arrivals split 131 under half an hour, 129 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 218 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early220 flights16.9%
- Within 15 min602 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late131 flights10.1%
- 30–59 min late129 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late133 flights10.2%
- 2+ hours late85 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,300 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 460 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 52 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 70 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for American on PHX to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 23 December 2025, 12 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. Three of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 23 December 2025 | 12 hours 2 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 14 December 2025 | 10 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 December 2025 | 9 hours 48 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 13 June 2026 | 8 hours 53 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 January 2026 | 8 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 37,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 20%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 37,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 36,784 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
16.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 651 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.2% on time across 1,313 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,312 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on PHX to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 86.9% on time and June 34.5%, a swing of 52 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,300 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to SFO, every carrier
- American on SFO to PHX, the return leg
- United Airlines on PHX to SFO67.7%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to SFO65.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on PHX to SFO63.7%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to SFO57.7%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.