Carrier route record
WNRNO→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Reno to Phoenix
- Flights
- 961
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on RNO to PHX 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 961 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's RNO to PHX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 955 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.42%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.7%
Every carrier on RNO to PHX, 2,416 flights
These figures cover 961 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on RNO to PHX
Southwest flew 961 of the 2,416 flights on RNO to PHX, about 40% of it. Its 84.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,186 | 86.5% | 108 min | 0.84% | A+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 228 | 85.8% | 51 min | 0.88% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 961 | 84.7% | 68 min | 0.42% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 40 | 84.6% | 87 min | 2.50% | B |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 40 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–8am364 flights96.7%
- 8am–11am111 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm198 flights87.2%
- 2pm–5pm186 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm98 flights57.1%
- 8pm–5am4 flights—
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 96.7% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on RNO to PHX through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 77.6%. March is the strongest month at 91.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 14 points. July was the busiest month here, with 88 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.9%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 9,896 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% 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 9,896 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 9,896 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 96.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.42%, 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
5.5% 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 about 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. 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 74.8% on time across 961 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. 961 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 Southwest on RNO to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 961 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 955 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- RNO to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to RNO, the return leg
- American Airlines on RNO to PHX86.5%
- Envoy Air on RNO to PHX85.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.