Carrier route record
AASAT→PHX
American Airlines · San Antonio to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,018
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SAT to PHX lands a B+, 3 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 1,018 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate American on SAT 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
80.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,006 completed flights
Avg delay
115 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.9%
Every carrier on SAT to PHX, 2,512 flights
These figures cover 1,018 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% 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
American against every carrier on SAT to PHX
American flew 1,018 of the 2,512 flights on SAT to PHX, about 41% of it. Its 80.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.3% to Envoy at 64.1%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,390 | 83.3% | 51 min | 0.22% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 65 | 83.1% | 57 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,018 | 80.6% | 115 min | 0.98% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 39 | 64.1% | 37 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on SAT to PHX
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 21 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–8am103 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am308 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm28 flights—
- 2pm–5pm319 flights75.8%
- 5pm–8pm259 flights70.7%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 70.7% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 319 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SAT to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 48.3% on time, 42 points below April, the best at 90.0%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 108 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.1%. 14 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 57% of the 22,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 9%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
57% 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 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 22,367 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 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
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. 9.2% 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.
The 843 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 runs 79.2% on time across 1,019 flights, within about a point 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. 1,018 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 American on SAT to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,018 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 80.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,006 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAT to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to SAT, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SAT to PHX83.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- San Antonio International (SAT) 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.