Carrier route record
OOSFO→PHX
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Phoenix
- Flights
- 538
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to PHX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 538 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,443 at 81.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SFO to PHX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 534 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.74%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
74.4%
Every carrier on SFO to PHX, 4,643 flights
These figures cover 538 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
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to PHX
SkyWest flew 538 of the 4,643 flights on SFO to PHX, about 12% of it. Its 87.3% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. United Airlines arrives on time 81.0% 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 (this page) | 538 | 87.3% | 67 min | 0.74% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,443 | 81.0% | 59 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 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 United 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.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SFO to PHX
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am247 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am58 flights69.0%
- 11am–2pm59 flights87.9%
- 2pm–5pm7 flights—
- 5pm–8pm78 flights81.8%
- 8pm–5am89 flights83.0%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 69.0% for the morning window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SFO to PHX through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 76.2%. July is the strongest month at 93.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. March was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.2%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 4,523 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 1,980 of the 4,523 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,523 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 68.5% on time across 538 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 538 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 SkyWest on SFO to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 538 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 87.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 534 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to PHX, every carrier
- SkyWest on PHX to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to PHX81.0%
- American Airlines on SFO to PHX75.7%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to PHX61.1%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to PHX59.6%
- SkyWest 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.