Carrier route record

AASEA→PHX

American Airlines · Seattle to Phoenix

Flights: 221
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 7

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

American on SEA to PHX lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 221 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 760 at 85.3% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 85.3% on time across 760 flights.

On time

83.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 220 completed flights

Avg delay

76 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.45%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.2%

Every carrier on SEA to PHX, 7,205 flights

These figures cover 221 flights between September 2025 and August 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.

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Carrier by carrier

American against every carrier on SEA to PHX

American flew 221 of the 7,205 flights on SEA to PHX, about 3% of it. Its 83.2% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 85.3% to Southwest at 65.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Envoy Air arrives on time 85.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 65.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,042 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	760	85.3%	74 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	221	83.2%	76 min	0.45%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,768	80.9%	67 min	0.96%	B+
Alaska Airlines	2,889	79.2%	45 min	0.66%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	409	78.5%	80 min	0.49%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	116	74.5%	146 min	5.17%	C−
Southwest Airlines	1,042	65.1%	49 min	0.77%	C+

The spread between Envoy and Southwest is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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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 221 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's SEA to PHX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.2% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on SEA to PHX through the year

Oct–Dec 202580 flights77.5%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights88.3%
Apr–Jun 202636 flights100.0%
Jul–Sep 202627 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. 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 83.2% on time across 221 flights.

American on SEA to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 77.5%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 74 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 65.6%, a spread of 28 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late American on SEA to PHX runs when it is late

American on SEA to PHX often beats the schedule: 66 of 220 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 37 late arrivals split 13 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 17 an hour or more.

15+ min early66 flights30.0%
Within 15 min117 flights53.2%
15–29 min late13 flights5.9%
30–59 min late7 flights3.2%
1–2 hours late10 flights4.5%
2+ hours late7 flights3.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 220 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

9 of 38 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. 8 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for American on SEA to PHX

The latest arrival of the period was on 23 August 2026, 6 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of American on SEA to PHX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
23 August 2026	6 hours 44 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
18 December 2025	3 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
15 August 2026	3 hours 29 minutes	Carrier
19 November 2025	2 hours 33 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 November 2025	2 hours 17 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 2,806 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
62%
National Airspace System
19%
Carrier
19%
Extreme weather
0%

62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,806 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 62 to one. The split is drawn from 2,806 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.7% 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.

The 1,107 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.

The return leg runs 82.5% on time across 224 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. 221 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 SEA to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 221 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 220 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures