Carrier route record
AASFO→PHX
American Airlines · San Francisco to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,313
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on SFO to PHX sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 1,313 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 572 at 85.2% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 85.2% on time across 572 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,297 completed flights
Avg delay
98 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.8%
Every carrier on SFO to PHX, 4,727 flights
These figures cover 1,313 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on SFO to PHX
American flew 1,313 of the 4,727 flights on SFO to PHX, about 28% of it. Its 73.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 85.2% to Southwest at 58.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 85.2% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 58.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,076 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 572 | 85.2% | 75 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,488 | 79.9% | 59 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,313 | 73.2% | 98 min | 0.91% | C+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 278 | 61.1% | 106 min | 2.16% | D |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,076 | 58.8% | 57 min | 0.56% | D+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 26 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 26 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am132 flights94.6%
- 8am–11am365 flights82.3%
- 11am–2pm324 flights64.3%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights67.1%
- 5pm–8pm148 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. 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 64.3% on time against 94.6% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on SFO to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 57.1% on time, 32 points below March, the best at 89.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 65.4%, a spread of 19 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on SFO to PHX runs when it is late
American on SFO to PHX often beats the schedule: 325 of 1,297 completed flights, 25%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 348 late arrivals split 94 under half an hour, 121 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 133 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early325 flights25.1%
- Within 15 min624 flights48.1%
- 15–29 min late94 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late121 flights9.3%
- 1–2 hours late68 flights5.2%
- 2+ hours late65 flights5.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,297 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 364 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 43 made it up before arrival. 27 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on SFO to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 April 2026, 27 hours 49 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 April 2026 | 27 hours 49 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 May 2026 | 25 hours 24 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 22 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 March 2026 | 21 hours 48 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 March 2026 | 13 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 34,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 34,099 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 15,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.30%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 651 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.2% on time across 1,312 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,313 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on SFO to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 89.3% on time and June 57.1%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,297 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to SFO, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to PHX85.2%
- United Airlines on SFO to PHX79.9%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to PHX61.1%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to PHX58.8%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.