Carrier route record
AASFO→PHX
American Airlines · San Francisco to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,320
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 B+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 2 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land close to two hours behind schedule. That rests on 1,320 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 538 at 87.3% on time.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.3% on time across 538 flights.
Key figures
On time
75.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,307 completed flights
Avg delay
106 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on SFO to PHX, 4,643 flights
These figures cover 1,320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.5% 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 SFO to PHX
American flew 1,320 of the 4,643 flights on SFO to PHX, about 28% of it. Its 75.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to Frontier at 59.6%. 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 87.3% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 61.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,079 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 538 | 87.3% | 67 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,443 | 81.0% | 59 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,320 | 75.7% | 106 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,079 | 61.1% | 57 min | 0.56% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 263 | 59.6% | 98 min | 3.04% | 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.
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 27 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am133 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am364 flights84.8%
- 11am–2pm325 flights67.8%
- 2pm–5pm342 flights69.7%
- 5pm–8pm154 flights67.8%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 60% 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 67.8% on time against 94.7% 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 364 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 85.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.2%. 18 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 50% of the 34,000 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 45%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
50% 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 34,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 33,598 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 15,000 of the 34,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. 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 66.9% on time across 1,319 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,320 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. 1,307 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 PHX87.3%
- United Airlines on SFO to PHX81.0%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to PHX61.1%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to PHX59.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.