Route reliability record
PHX→XNA
Phoenix to Bentonville
- Flights
- 827
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,023 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 827 PHX to XNA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly PHX to XNA: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.7% of the time and Saturday flights 91.2%, against 85.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 82 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 823 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
87.2% on time across 698 flights
These figures cover 827 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on PHX to XNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 698 | 87.2% | 52 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 78.7% | 42 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 35 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PHX to XNA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 827 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am361 flights86.1%
- 11am–2pm108 flights91.7%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights82.8%
- 5pm–8pm49 flights87.8%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.7% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 82.8%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
June is the worst month at 75.0% on time, 20 points below April, the best at 95.3%. 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 91 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.0%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 5,825 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
57% 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 5,825 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 57 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 5,825 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.36%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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.
The 1,023 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 runs 86.7% on time across 830 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 827 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in XNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 827 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 85.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 823 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PHX to XNA questions
How often is PHX to XNA delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.2% of the 827 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is PHX to XNA compared with the rest of the country?
85.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 8 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PHX to XNA?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 91.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 82.8%, 9 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on PHX to XNA?
June is the weakest month at 75.0% on time, compared with 95.3% in April. Across the year that is 20 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- XNA to PHX — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on PHX to XNA87.2%
- American Airlines on PHX to XNA78.7%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- DFW to XNA, a related route78.2%
- PHX to LAX, a related route82.8%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.2%
- American Airlines on-time record78.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record50.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PHX to XNA and XNA to PHX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.