Carrier route record

AASEA→PHX

American Airlines · Seattle to Phoenix

Flights: 199
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 3%
Carriers: 7

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

American on SEA 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 199 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 691 at 86.9% on time.

Envoy Air is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 86.9% on time across 691 flights.

On time

84.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 198 completed flights

Avg delay

81 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.50%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

79.2%

Every carrier on SEA to PHX, 7,268 flights

These figures cover 199 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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

American against every carrier on SEA to PHX

American flew 199 of the 7,268 flights on SEA to PHX, about 3% of it. Its 84.8% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of seven carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.9% to Southwest at 69.0%. 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 86.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,036 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	691	86.9%	71 min	0.00%	A+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	199	84.8%	81 min	0.50%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,765	82.6%	65 min	0.85%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	506	80.2%	75 min	0.59%	B+
Alaska Airlines	2,906	79.0%	45 min	0.65%	B+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	165	70.4%	126 min	3.64%	C−
Southwest Airlines	1,036	69.0%	47 min	0.68%	C+

The spread between Envoy and Southwest is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 199 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 84.8% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on SEA to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 20255 flights—
Oct–Dec 202580 flights77.5%
Jan–Mar 202678 flights88.3%
Apr–Jun 202636 flights100.0%

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 84.8% on time across 199 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 66 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.0%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,419 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
16%
Extreme weather
0%

52% 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 2,419 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 2,419 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.50%, below the national 1.81% 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

7.6% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.6% on time across 202 flights, 3 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 199 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. 199 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 84.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 198 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