Route reliability record
SBA→PHX
Santa Barbara to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,432
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 455 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 1,432 SBA to PHX flights, of which American Airlines flew 677 at 84.4% on time.
Best time to fly SBA to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.6%, against 84.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,409 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.40%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
84.4% on time across 677 flights
These figures cover 1,432 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to PHX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 359 | 86.1% | 58 min | 1.39% | A |
| American Airlines | 677 | 84.4% | 141 min | 1.33% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 83.3% | 36 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 384 | 82.7% | 89 min | 1.56% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 84.4%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 | American Airlines | 83.3% | 84.4% | 1.33% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. SBA → PHXSanta Barbara to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 81.4% | 82.7% | 1.56% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights90.8%
- 8am–11am205 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm362 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm300 flights81.2%
- 5pm–8pm201 flights79.3%
- 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 90.8% of the time, against 79.3% 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 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 74.6% on time, 17 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 89.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 23,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
49% 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 23,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 23,363 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 8,897 of the 23,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.40% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% 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 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 80.8% 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: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 91.4% on time and July 74.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,409 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 six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.6% of the 1,432 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SBA to PHX?
American Airlines leads at 84.4% on time across 677 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 82.7%, a gap of 2 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 90.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 79.3%, 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 July delays on SBA to PHX?
July is the weakest month at 74.6% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 17 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 PHX86.1%
- American Airlines on SBA to PHX84.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to PHX82.7%
- SBA to SFO, a related route62.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- SBA to DEN, a related route83.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record86.1%
- American Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.