Carrier route record
AARDU→PHX
American Airlines · Raleigh to Phoenix
- Flights
- 489
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on RDU to PHX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 489 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's RDU to PHX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 102 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 484 completed flights
Avg delay
84 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.82%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.0%
Every carrier on RDU to PHX, 811 flights
These figures cover 489 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
American against every carrier on RDU to PHX
American flew 489 of the 811 flights on RDU to PHX, most of the route. Its 87.8% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 87.8% to Southwest at 78.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 489 | 87.8% | 84 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 322 | 78.2% | 41 min | 1.24% | B |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–8am333 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am32 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm122 flights80.3%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.8% of the time, against 80.3% for the evening window. That is 14 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 333 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on RDU to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 58.8% on time, 41 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 60 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 93.1% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 4,958 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
48% 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 4,958 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 48 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 4,958 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 1,922 of the 4,958 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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 4.5% 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.
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 76.1% on time across 489 flights, 12 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 12 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 American on RDU to PHX
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 87.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 484 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RDU to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to RDU, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on RDU to PHX78.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Raleigh-Durham International (RDU) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.