Carrier route record

OOSBA→PHX

SkyWest Airlines · Santa Barbara to Phoenix

Flights: 384
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 4

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

SkyWest on SBA to PHX lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 384 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SBA to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 376 completed flights

Avg delay

89 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.4%

Every carrier on SBA to PHX, 1,432 flights

These figures cover 384 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on SBA to PHX

SkyWest flew 384 of the 1,432 flights on SBA to PHX, about 27% of it. Its 82.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.1% to SkyWest at 82.7%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on SBA to PHX
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 (this page)	384	82.7%	89 min	1.56%	B

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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am49 flights91.7%
8am–11am78 flights94.7%
11am–2pm67 flights75.4%
2pm–5pm125 flights79.8%
5pm–8pm65 flights75.0%
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 75.0% for the evening window. That is 20 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

Jul–Sep 202529 flights—
Oct–Dec 202582 flights83.8%
Jan–Mar 2026139 flights84.4%
Apr–Jun 2026134 flights83.6%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 82.7% on time across 384 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on SBA to PHX held fairly steady: 83.8% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of about a point 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 90.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 70.9%. 20 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 5,787 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.

Carrier
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
39%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
4%

39% 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 5,787 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 5,787 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 2,825 of the 5,787 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 1.56% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.52%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.0% 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 an hour and a half, 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 82.2% on time across 384 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. 384 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. 384 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 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 376 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