Route reliability record
RNO→PHX
Reno to Phoenix
- Flights
- 2,438
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 601 mi
- Carriers
- 5
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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 2,438 RNO to PHX flights, of which American Airlines flew 1,099 at 86.7% on time.
Best time to fly RNO to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.4%, against 84.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,419 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
86.7% on time across 1,099 flights
These figures cover 2,438 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to PHX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,099 | 86.7% | 102 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 84.6% | 87 min | 2.50% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 966 | 84.2% | 67 min | 0.31% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 332 | 79.3% | 52 min | 0.60% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 86.7%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Reno to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RNO → PHXReno to Phoenix | American Airlines | 86.0% | 86.7% | 0.82% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
| 2. RNO → PHXReno to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 83.9% | 84.2% | 0.31% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 18 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am723 flights93.5%
- 8am–11am432 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm533 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm416 flights75.2%
- 5pm–8pm318 flights75.2%
- 8pm–5am16 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.5% of the time, against 75.2% for the evening window. That is 18 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 723 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter RNO to PHX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On RNO to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 93.5% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.2%, a wide gap of 18.3 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am93.5%
- 8–11am87.9%
- 11am–2pm83.2%
- 2–5pm75.2%
- 5–8pm75.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 2,438 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
August is the worst month at 80.1% on time, 9 points below March, the best at 89.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 240 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.7%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 29,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 29,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 to one. The split is drawn from 28,942 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, below the national 1.89% 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
5.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 601 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.4% on time across 2,438 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,438 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 75.2% on time against 93.5% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 18 points is the largest single thing you control here. American Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 2,419 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RNO to PHX questions
How often is RNO to PHX 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 15.3% of the 2,438 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RNO to PHX?
American Airlines leads at 86.7% on time across 1,099 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 84.2%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RNO to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.5% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.2%, 18 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 August delays on RNO to PHX?
August is the weakest month at 80.1% on time, compared with 89.2% in March. Across the year that is 9 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 RNO — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- American Airlines on RNO to PHX86.7%
- Southwest Airlines on RNO to PHX84.2%
- Envoy Air on RNO to PHX79.3%
- RNO to LAS, a related route81.4%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- RNO to LAX, a related route87.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record100.0%
- American Airlines on-time record86.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record84.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. RNO to PHX and PHX to RNO 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.