Carrier route record

OOSAN→PHX

SkyWest Airlines · San Diego to Phoenix

Flights: 445
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 8%
Carriers: 5

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

SkyWest on SAN to PHX draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 445 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.

On time

67.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 422 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

5.17%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

75.8%

Every carrier on SAN to PHX, 5,920 flights

These figures cover 445 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SAN to PHX

SkyWest flew 445 of the 5,920 flights on SAN to PHX, about 8% of it. Its 67.8% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 75.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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; Frontier Airlines manages 70.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 405 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 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 (this page)	445	67.8%	54 min	5.17%	C−

American leads Frontier by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am19 flights—
8am–11am30 flights—
11am–2pm101 flights60.6%
2pm–5pm104 flights64.0%
5pm–8pm109 flights75.2%
8pm–5am82 flights67.1%

Scale runs 50% to 80%. 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 60.6% on time against 75.2% for 5pm–8pm. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 109 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SAN to PHX through the year

Oct–Dec 2025107 flights51.6%
Jan–Mar 2026105 flights71.7%
Apr–Jun 2026233 flights72.8%

Scale runs 45% to 80%. 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 67.8% on time across 445 flights.

SkyWest on SAN to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 72.8% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 51.6%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 148 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 81.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 56.7%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 7,324 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
48%
National Airspace System
37%
Carrier
13%
Extreme weather
2%
Security
0%

48% 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 7,324 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 7,324 reported delay minutes.

37% 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 2,735 minutes out of 7,324, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations run at 5.17%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in twenty cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

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. 9.7% 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 5pm–8pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 69.3% on time across 446 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 445 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 SkyWest on SAN to PHX

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 5.17% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 55 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5pm–8pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 422 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