Carrier route record
OOPHX→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to San Francisco
- Flights
- 572
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PHX to SFO draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 572 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
63.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 570 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.17%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
63.6%
Every carrier on PHX to SFO, 4,728 flights
These figures cover 572 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to SFO
SkyWest flew 572 of the 4,728 flights on PHX to SFO, about 12% of it. Its 63.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 63.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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 (this page) | 572 | 63.7% | 67 min | 0.17% | D+ |
| American Airlines | 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 SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am249 flights55.8%
- 8am–11am209 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm57 flights45.6%
- 2pm–5pm53 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 35% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 45.6% on time against 76.9% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 249 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on PHX to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 31.4% on time, 56 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 84 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 72.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 53.9%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on PHX to SFO runs when it is late
The 207 late arrivals split 62 under half an hour, 71 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 74 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early134 flights23.5%
- Within 15 min229 flights40.2%
- 15–29 min late62 flights10.9%
- 30–59 min late71 flights12.5%
- 1–2 hours late50 flights8.8%
- 2+ hours late24 flights4.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 570 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 180 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 16 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 43 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 SkyWest on PHX to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 August 2026, 7 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 August 2026 | 7 hours 8 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 December 2025 | 7 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 August 2026 | 7 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 6 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 May 2026 | 5 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 54% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 5%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 7,445 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,815 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.17%, 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
13.0% 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 85.2% on time across 572 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 572 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 SkyWest on PHX to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 572 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 63.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 570 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to SFO, every carrier
- SkyWest on SFO to PHX, the return leg
- United Airlines on PHX to SFO67.7%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to SFO65.8%
- American Airlines on PHX to SFO63.2%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to SFO57.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.