Carrier route record

WNPHX→SNA

Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Santa Ana

Flights: 2,427
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 53%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.

Southwest on PHX to SNA lands a B+, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,427 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PHX to SNA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

79.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,415 completed flights

Avg delay

45 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.41%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.6%

Every carrier on PHX to SNA, 4,609 flights

These figures cover 2,427 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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

Southwest against every carrier on PHX to SNA

Southwest flew 2,427 of the 4,609 flights on PHX to SNA, most of the route. Its 79.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 87.3% to American at 78.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to SNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	288	87.3%	68 min	1.04%	A
Southwest Airlines (this page)	2,427	79.3%	45 min	0.41%	B+
American Airlines	1,894	78.9%	66 min	0.37%	B+

Departure window

When Southwest 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 half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am178 flights95.4%
8am–11am607 flights90.1%
11am–2pm398 flights78.6%
2pm–5pm425 flights72.9%
5pm–8pm396 flights64.5%
8pm–5am423 flights77.9%

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 64.5% on time, against 95.4% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 607 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on PHX to SNA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.January best, October worst

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 74.2%. January is the strongest month at 86.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 13 points. December was the busiest month here, with 227 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 70.9%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 22,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
1%

52% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 22,276 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 8,781 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

At 338 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.2% on time across 2,426 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,427 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 Southwest on PHX to SNA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 86.7% on time and October 74.2%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 2,415 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