Carrier route record
OOSFO→PHX
SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Phoenix
- Flights
- 572
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 12%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SFO to PHX earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 572 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,488 at 79.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SFO to PHX record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 79 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 568 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
72.8%
Every carrier on SFO to PHX, 4,727 flights
These figures cover 572 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to PHX
SkyWest flew 572 of the 4,727 flights on SFO to PHX, about 12% of it. Its 85.2% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. United Airlines arrives on time 79.9% 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 (this page) | 572 | 85.2% | 75 min | 0.70% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,488 | 79.9% | 59 min | 0.40% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 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 United and Southwest is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SFO to PHX
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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 35 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am250 flights95.2%
- 8am–11am84 flights60.7%
- 11am–2pm59 flights87.9%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm78 flights81.8%
- 8pm–5am93 flights81.5%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.2% of the time, against 60.7% for the morning window. That is 35 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 250 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%. June is the strongest month at 90.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 14 points. March was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.0%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on SFO to PHX runs when it is late
SkyWest on SFO to PHX often beats the schedule: 189 of 568 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 84 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 21 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 25 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early189 flights33.3%
- Within 15 min295 flights51.9%
- 15–29 min late38 flights6.7%
- 30–59 min late21 flights3.7%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights2.3%
- 2+ hours late12 flights2.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 568 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 82 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 19 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on SFO to PHX
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 May 2026, 12 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 May 2026 | 12 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 July 2026 | 9 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 August 2026 | 7 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 December 2025 | 5 hours | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 22 December 2025 | 3 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,265 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,265 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 6,265 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,413 of the 6,265 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 63.7% on time across 572 flights, 22 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 22 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 572 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. 572 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 568 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 PHX79.9%
- American Airlines on SFO to PHX73.2%
- Frontier Airlines on SFO to PHX61.1%
- Southwest Airlines on SFO to PHX58.8%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.