Route reliability record
SBA→PHX
Santa Barbara to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,432
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 455 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,432 SBA to PHX flights, of which Envoy Air flew 367 at 86.8% on time.
Best time to fly SBA to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.1%, against 85.7% for the route overall.
Envoy Air is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 86.8% on time across 367 flights.
Key figures
On time
85.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,415 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Envoy
86.8% on time across 367 flights
These figures cover 1,432 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to PHX
The three carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 8 | 87.5% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Envoy Air | 367 | 86.8% | 74 min | 0.82% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 649 | 86.0% | 155 min | 1.23% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 408 | 84.1% | 77 min | 0.98% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 86.8%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Barbara to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SBA → PHXSanta Barbara to Phoenix | Envoy Air | 86.1% | 86.8% | 0.82% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. SBA → PHXSanta Barbara to Phoenix | American Airlines | 84.9% | 86.0% | 1.23% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. SBA → PHXSanta Barbara to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 83.3% | 84.1% | 0.98% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am264 flights91.2%
- 11am–2pm361 flights82.4%
- 2pm–5pm238 flights81.2%
- 5pm–8pm204 flights79.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.4% of the time, against 79.2% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SBA to PHX by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SBA to PHX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 79.2%, a wide gap of 12.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.4%
- 8–11am91.2%
- 11am–2pm82.4%
- 2–5pm81.2%
- 5–8pm79.2%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,432 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
June is the worst month at 80.7% on time, 11 points below May, the best at 91.4%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.0%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 22,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 22,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 to one. The split is drawn from 22,449 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,717 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 455 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 82.2% on time across 1,432 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,432 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 5pm–8pm departure. It runs 79.2% on time against 91.4% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 12 points is the largest single thing you control here. Envoy Air is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,415 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBA to PHX questions
How often is SBA to PHX delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.3% of the 1,432 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to PHX?
Envoy Air leads at 86.8% on time across 367 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 84.1%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SBA to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.2%, 12 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are June delays on SBA to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 80.7% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 11 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to SBA — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on SBA to PHX86.8%
- American Airlines on SBA to PHX86.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to PHX84.1%
- SBA to SFO, a related route61.3%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- SBA to SLC, a related route94.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.5%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.8%
- American Airlines on-time record86.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SBA to PHX and PHX to SBA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.