Carrier route record

MQSBA→PHX

Envoy Air · Santa Barbara to Phoenix

Flights: 359
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 4

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

Envoy 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 359 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 677 at 84.4% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Envoy's SBA to PHX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 85 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 353 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.39%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.4%

Every carrier on SBA to PHX, 1,432 flights

These figures cover 359 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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

Envoy against every carrier on SBA to PHX

Envoy flew 359 of the 1,432 flights on SBA to PHX, about 25% of it. Its 86.1% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.1% to SkyWest at 82.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SBA to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air (this page)thin 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.

Departure window

When Envoy runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 359 flights.

5am–8am27 flights—
8am–11am112 flights89.3%
11am–2pm58 flights87.9%
2pm–5pm162 flights81.4%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 89.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 81.4% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 162 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Envoy on SBA to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025110 flights85.8%
Oct–Dec 2025130 flights84.4%
Jan–Mar 202629 flights—
Apr–Jun 202690 flights90.0%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 86.1% on time across 359 flights.

Quarter by quarter Envoy on SBA to PHX held fairly steady: 85.8% in Jul–Sep 2025, 84.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 90.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 6 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.9%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Envoy runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 79% of the 2,861 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
79%
National Airspace System
13%
Carrier
6%
Extreme weather
2%

79% 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 2,861 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 33 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 2,861 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.3% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.1% 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 about an hour, 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 85.6% on time across 359 flights, within half 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. 359 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 Envoy on SBA to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 359 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 86.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 353 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