Route reliability record
RDU→PHX
Raleigh to Phoenix
- Flights
- 811
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,891 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 811 RDU to PHX flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly RDU to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Monday flights 90.9%, against 84.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 801 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.99%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
87.8% on time across 489 flights
These figures cover 811 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 RDU to PHX
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 | 489 | 87.8% | 84 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 322 | 78.2% | 41 min | 1.24% | B |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 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–8am426 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am77 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm102 flights75.5%
- 2pm–5pm38 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm167 flights74.9%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 73.0% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 426 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 54 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 45.7% on time, 54 points below September, the best at 100.0%. 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 89 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.3%. 11 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 50% of the 7,794 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
50% 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 7,794 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 7,794 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 2,839 of the 7,794 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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 1,891 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 74.4% on time across 811 flights, 10 points below 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 10 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 811 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 PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 811 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 801 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDU to PHX questions
How often is RDU to PHX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.0% of the 811 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is RDU to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
84.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RDU to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.0%, 17 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 RDU to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 45.7% on time, compared with 100.0% in September. Across the year that is 54 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
- PHX to RDU — the return legseparate record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on RDU to PHX87.8%
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to PHX78.2%
- RDU to ATL, a related route87.6%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- RDU to ORD, a related route74.4%
- American Airlines on-time record87.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record78.2%
- 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. RDU to PHX and PHX to RDU 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.