Carrier route record
OOPHX→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to San Francisco
- Flights
- 538
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PHX to SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 9 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 538 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,444 at 73.1% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 73.1% on time across 1,444 flights.
Key figures
On time
68.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 536 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
67.6%
Every carrier on PHX to SFO, 4,644 flights
These figures cover 538 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to SFO
SkyWest flew 538 of the 4,644 flights on PHX to SFO, about 12% of it. Its 68.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 67.6%. 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 60.5%. 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 73.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 60.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,079 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 | 1,444 | 73.1% | 62 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 68.6% | 61 min | 0.76% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 538 | 68.5% | 65 min | 0.19% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 1,319 | 66.9% | 76 min | 0.91% | C+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,079 | 60.5% | 55 min | 0.28% | D+ |
The spread between United and Southwest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 27 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am241 flights63.9%
- 8am–11am209 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm30 flights50.0%
- 2pm–5pm53 flights67.3%
- 5pm–8pm4 flights—
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 40% 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 50.0% 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 241 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 81.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 55.3%. 26 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 55% of the 11,000 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.
- 55%National Airspace System
- 22%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%Extreme weather
55% 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 6,105 minutes out of 11,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 11,019 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.19%, below the national 1.81% 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.3% on time across 538 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 538 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. 538 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 68.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 536 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 SFO73.1%
- Frontier Airlines on PHX to SFO68.6%
- American Airlines on PHX to SFO66.9%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to SFO60.5%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.