Carrier route record

AASBP→PHX

American Airlines · San Luis Obispo to Phoenix

Flights: 532
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 3

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

American on SBP to PHX lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.5 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 532 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's SBP to PHX record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 40 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 527 completed flights

Avg delay

152 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.94%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.9%

Every carrier on SBP to PHX, 1,230 flights

These figures cover 532 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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

American against every carrier on SBP to PHX

American flew 532 of the 1,230 flights on SBP to PHX, about 43% of it. Its 81.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 89.6% to SkyWest at 80.1%. One 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 SBP to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Airthin sample	281	89.6%	47 min	1.07%	A
American Airlines (this page)	532	81.6%	152 min	0.94%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	417	80.1%	103 min	0.96%	B+

Departure window

When American 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 532 flights.

5am–8am223 flights85.0%
8am–11am9 flights—
11am–2pm234 flights79.1%
2pm–5pm48 flights80.4%
5pm–8pm18 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. 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 79.1% on time against 85.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 234 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on SBP to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.December best, October worst

Delays peak in October, when the on-time rate falls to 69.4%. December is the strongest month at 95.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 26 points. November was the busiest month here, with 75 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.0%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 15,000 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.

Carrier
60%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
8%
National Airspace System
6%
Security
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 8,848 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,774 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 0.94% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

8.3% 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 2.5 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 81.4% on time across 533 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. 532 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 SBP to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 532 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 81.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 527 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