Carrier route record
AASBA→PHX
American Airlines · Santa Barbara to Phoenix
- Flights
- 649
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 45%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SBA to PHX 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.6 hours. That rests on 649 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 367 at 86.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, American's SBA to PHX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 641 completed flights
Avg delay
155 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.7%
Every carrier on SBA to PHX, 1,432 flights
These figures cover 649 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
American against every carrier on SBA to PHX
American flew 649 of the 1,432 flights on SBA to PHX, about 45% of it. Its 86.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 87.5% to SkyWest at 84.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two 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 (this page) | 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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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 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am313 flights91.3%
- 8am–11am12 flights—
- 11am–2pm186 flights79.2%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm131 flights82.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 79.2% on time against 91.3% for 5am–8am. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 313 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SBA to PHX through the year
December is the weak month at 71.7% on time, against 91.7% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.7%, a spread of 17 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on SBA to PHX runs when it is late
American on SBA to PHX often beats the schedule: 254 of 641 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 90 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early254 flights39.6%
- Within 15 min297 flights46.3%
- 15–29 min late32 flights5.0%
- 30–59 min late19 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights2.7%
- 2+ hours late22 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 641 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
18 of 96 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. Only 12 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on SBA to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 April 2026, 52 hours 14 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 April 2026 | 52 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 February 2026 | 17 hours 17 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 September 2025 | 16 hours 38 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 22 March 2026 | 13 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 December 2025 | 12 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. The split is drawn from 13,911 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,764 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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 about 2.6 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 78.5% on time across 650 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 649 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 SBA to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 649 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 86.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 641 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SBA to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to SBA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on SBA to PHX86.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBA to PHX84.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.