Carrier route record

OOPHX→SLC

SkyWest Airlines · Phoenix to Salt Lake City

Flights: 1,159
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
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 SLC lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,159 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,708 at 90.4% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 90.4% on time across 1,708 flights.

On time

83.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,155 completed flights

Avg delay

67 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.26%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.0%

Every carrier on PHX to SLC, 5,757 flights

These figures cover 1,159 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PHX to SLC

SkyWest flew 1,159 of the 5,757 flights on PHX to SLC, about 20% of it. Its 83.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.4% to Southwest at 75.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,858 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SLC
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,708	90.4%	75 min	0.59%	A+
American Airlinesthin sample	266	86.7%	70 min	0.38%	A+
Frontier Airlines	677	83.6%	78 min	1.77%	B
Envoy Airthin sample	89	83.1%	46 min	0.00%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	1,159	83.1%	67 min	0.26%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,858	75.5%	48 min	0.32%	B+

The spread between Delta and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 1,159 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am199 flights81.8%
11am–2pm98 flights85.7%
2pm–5pm365 flights86.0%
5pm–8pm316 flights83.2%
8pm–5am181 flights77.3%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 86.0% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 77.3%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PHX to SLC through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, November worst

Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 73.1%. August is the strongest month at 92.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 20 points. March was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.4%. 11 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. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 13,000 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
3%
Security
0%

38% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 13,149 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 7,037 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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

6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 507 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 86.5% on time across 1,159 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,159 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 SkyWest on PHX to SLC

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 92.9% on time and November 73.1%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,155 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