Carrier route record

ASSAN→PHX

Alaska Airlines · San Diego to Phoenix

Flights: 217
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 4%
Carriers: 5

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

Alaska on SAN to PHX lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 217 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 1,669 at 81.3% on time.

American Airlines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 81.3% on time across 1,669 flights.

On time

77.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 213 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on SAN to PHX, 5,920 flights

These figures cover 217 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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

Alaska against every carrier on SAN to PHX

Alaska flew 217 of the 5,920 flights on SAN to PHX, about 4% of it. Its 77.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 81.3% to SkyWest at 67.8%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 81.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 67.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 445 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines	1,669	81.3%	118 min	0.72%	B+
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	217	77.9%	46 min	1.84%	B
Southwest Airlines	3,184	74.4%	50 min	1.54%	C
Frontier Airlines	405	70.9%	74 min	1.23%	C
SkyWest Airlines	445	67.8%	54 min	5.17%	C−

SkyWest Airlines cancels 5.2% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.

Departure window

When Alaska 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 217 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am72 flights79.2%
11am–2pm6 flights—
2pm–5pm67 flights75.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am72 flights81.4%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 81.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 6 points.

Across the year

Alaska on SAN to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025125 flights82.0%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights72.5%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 77.9% on time across 217 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on SAN to PHX logged 125 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 92 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 2,151 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
43%
National Airspace System
32%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
4%

43% 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 2,151 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 2,151 reported delay minutes.

32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 691 minutes out of 2,151, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations sit at 1.84% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 304 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.4% on time across 218 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 217 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 Alaska on SAN to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 217 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 77.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 213 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