Carrier route record
AASAN→PHX
American Airlines · San Diego to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,669
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SAN to PHX lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,669 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 3,184 at 74.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on SAN to PHX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
81.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,654 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.8%
Every carrier on SAN to PHX, 5,920 flights
These figures cover 1,669 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
American against every carrier on SAN to PHX
American flew 1,669 of the 5,920 flights on SAN to PHX, about 28% of it. Its 81.3% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 81.3% to SkyWest at 67.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 74.4% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,669 | 81.3% | 118 min | 0.72% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin 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 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 19 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am353 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am355 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm365 flights78.0%
- 2pm–5pm326 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm246 flights73.0%
- 8pm–5am24 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 71.8% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SAN to PHX through the year
August is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 22 points below February, the best at 95.3%. 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 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%. 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 50% of the 36,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 6%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
50% 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 36,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 36,484 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 15,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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
7.8% 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.
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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.5% on time across 1,670 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,669 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 SAN to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 95.3% on time and August 73.1%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,654 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to SAN, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to PHX77.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to PHX74.4%
- Frontier Airlines on SAN to PHX70.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to PHX67.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) 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.