Route reliability record
SBP→PHX
San Luis Obispo to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,230
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 509 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,230 SBP to PHX flights, of which American Airlines flew 532 at 81.6% on time.
Best time to fly SBP to PHX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.2%, against 82.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 53 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,218 completed flights
Avg delay
118 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
81.6% on time across 532 flights
These figures cover 1,230 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 SBP 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 | 281 | 89.6% | 47 min | 1.07% | A |
| American Airlines | 532 | 81.6% | 152 min | 0.94% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 417 | 80.1% | 103 min | 0.96% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 81.6%, 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 San Luis Obispo 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. SBP → PHXSan Luis Obispo to Phoenix | American Airlines | 80.8% | 81.6% | 0.94% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SBP → PHXSan Luis Obispo to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.1% | 0.96% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 13 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am357 flights84.9%
- 8am–11am107 flights91.3%
- 11am–2pm361 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm222 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm183 flights83.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.3% of the time, against 78.4% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 361 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.
Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 72.5%. December is the strongest month at 89.7%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 17 points. December was the busiest month here, with 138 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%. 12 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. Carrier accounts for 56% of the 25,000 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.
- 56%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 24,575 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, 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 14,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 509 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 83.1% on time across 1,231 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,230 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. December runs 89.7% on time and October 72.5%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of October before you think about anything else. 1,218 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SBP to PHX questions
How often is SBP 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 17.1% of the 1,230 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 SBP to PHX?
American Airlines leads at 81.6% on time across 532 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 80.1%, 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 SBP to PHX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 13 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 October delays on SBP to PHX?
October is the weakest month at 72.5% on time, compared with 89.7% in December. 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 SBP — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on SBP to PHX89.6%
- American Airlines on SBP to PHX81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on SBP to PHX80.1%
- SBP to SFO, a related route62.1%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- SBP to DEN, a related route81.2%
- Envoy Air on-time record89.6%
- American Airlines on-time record81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.1%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SBP to PHX and PHX to SBP 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.