Carrier route record
WNPHX→TPA
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Tampa
- Flights
- 489
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to TPA 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 489 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Southwest on PHX to TPA runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 161 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 488 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
70.4%
Every carrier on PHX to TPA, 1,222 flights
These figures cover 489 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.5% 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
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to TPA
Southwest flew 489 of the 1,222 flights on PHX to TPA, about 40% of it. Its 61.5% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 70.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 76.3% to Southwest at 61.5%.
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 733 | 76.3% | 62 min | 0.68% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 489 | 61.5% | 61 min | 0.20% | D+ |
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 38 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–8am39 flights89.7%
- 8am–11am95 flights73.7%
- 11am–2pm86 flights54.7%
- 2pm–5pm151 flights57.6%
- 5pm–8pm118 flights52.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.1% on time, against 89.7% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 151 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to TPA through the year
June is the worst month at 46.7% on time, 40 points below September, the best at 86.7%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 67.2% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 54.0%. 13 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. Carrier accounts for 51% 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.
- 51%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
40% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 11,393 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 5,809 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.20%, 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. 11.5% 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.
At 1,788 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.2% on time across 489 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 489 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 Southwest on PHX to TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 489 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 61.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to TPA, every carrier
- Southwest on TPA to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to TPA76.3%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.