Carrier route record

AARNO→PHX

American Airlines · Reno to Phoenix

Flights: 1,186
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 49%
Carriers: 5

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on RNO to PHX 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,186 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's RNO to PHX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,174 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.7%

Every carrier on RNO to PHX, 2,416 flights

These figures cover 1,186 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 RNO to PHX

American flew 1,186 of the 2,416 flights on RNO to PHX, about 49% of it. Its 86.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 100.0% to Frontier at 84.6%. Three 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.

On-time performance by carrier on RNO to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)	1,186	86.5%	108 min	0.84%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	228	85.8%	51 min	0.88%	A+
Southwest Airlines	961	84.7%	68 min	0.42%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	40	84.6%	87 min	2.50%	B

Departure window

When American runs best on this route

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 1,186 flights.

5am–8am357 flights89.8%
8am–11am155 flights91.0%
11am–2pm352 flights83.4%
2pm–5pm181 flights81.2%
5pm–8pm140 flights87.1%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.0% of the time, against 81.2% for the afternoon window. That is 10 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 357 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on RNO to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, November worst

April is the best month on the calendar at 95.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 133 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.3%. 7 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 46% of the 17,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
46%
Carrier
39%
Extreme weather
8%
National Airspace System
7%

46% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 17,210 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 6,667 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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

5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.4% on time across 1,186 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,186 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.

What to do with this

Booking American on RNO to PHX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 95.3% on time and November 81.7%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,174 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures