Carrier route record
OOSBA→PHX
SkyWest Airlines · Santa Barbara to Phoenix
- Flights
- 408
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SBA to PHX 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 408 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, SkyWest's SBA to PHX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 402 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.7%
Every carrier on SBA to PHX, 1,432 flights
These figures cover 408 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SBA to PHX
SkyWest flew 408 of the 1,432 flights on SBA to PHX, about 28% of it. Its 84.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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: about a point 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 (this page) | 408 | 84.1% | 77 min | 0.98% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 86.8%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against about a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am49 flights91.7%
- 8am–11am98 flights94.7%
- 11am–2pm67 flights83.6%
- 2pm–5pm125 flights79.8%
- 5pm–8pm69 flights72.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 72.1% for the evening window. That is 23 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 125 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SBA to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 24 points below May, the best at 90.6%. 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 65 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 91.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.6%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SBA to PHX runs when it is late
SkyWest on SBA to PHX often beats the schedule: 146 of 402 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 64 late arrivals split 16 under half an hour, 20 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 28 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early146 flights36.3%
- Within 15 min192 flights47.8%
- 15–29 min late16 flights4.0%
- 30–59 min late20 flights5.0%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 402 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 65 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 6 made it up before arrival. Only 5 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SBA to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 April 2026, 8 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across April, January, March, December and July, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 April 2026 | 8 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 January 2026 | 3 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 March 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 December 2025 | 3 hours | Extreme weather |
| 13 July 2026 | 2 hours 45 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 4,923 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,923 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 to one. The split is drawn from 4,923 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 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.49%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 a little over 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 82.7% on time across 408 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. 408 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 SkyWest on SBA to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 408 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 84.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 402 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SBA to PHX, every carrier
- SkyWest on PHX to SBA, the return leg
- Envoy Air on SBA to PHX86.8%
- American Airlines on SBA to PHX86.0%
- SkyWest 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.