Carrier route record
F9SAN→PHX
Frontier Airlines · San Diego to Phoenix
- Flights
- 405
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 7%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Frontier Airlines.
Frontier on SAN to PHX sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 405 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 three carriers covered here at 81.3% on time across 1,669 flights.
Key figures
On time
70.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 399 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.8%
Every carrier on SAN to PHX, 5,920 flights
These figures cover 405 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Frontier against every carrier on SAN to PHX
Frontier flew 405 of the 5,920 flights on SAN to PHX, about 7% of it. Its 70.9% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four 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. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 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 (this page) | 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 Frontier runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am12 flights—
- 8am–11am68 flights82.1%
- 11am–2pm99 flights58.6%
- 2pm–5pm126 flights73.8%
- 5pm–8pm22 flights—
- 8pm–5am78 flights68.5%
Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 58.6% on time against 82.1% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 126 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Frontier on SAN to PHX through the year
August is the worst month at 58.1% on time, 24 points below September, the best at 82.5%. 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 48 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 60.0%. 30 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Frontier runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 74% of the 8,596 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.
- 74%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
74% 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 8,596 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 74 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 8,596 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 82.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.25%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.5% on time across 406 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 405 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 Frontier on SAN to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 405 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 70.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 399 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to PHX, every carrier
- Frontier on PHX to SAN, the return leg
- American Airlines on SAN to PHX81.3%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to PHX77.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to PHX74.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on SAN to PHX67.8%
- Frontier Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.