Carrier route record

AASLC→PHX

American Airlines · Salt Lake City to Phoenix

Flights: 266
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 5%
Carriers: 6

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

American on SLC 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 close to two hours. That rests on 266 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,708 at 87.9% on time.

Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the four carriers covered here at 87.9% on time across 1,708 flights.

On time

84.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 265 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.38%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.9%

Every carrier on SLC to PHX, 5,759 flights

These figures cover 266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 SLC to PHX

American flew 266 of the 5,759 flights on SLC to PHX, about 5% of it. Its 84.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to Southwest at 79.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 87.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,860 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SLC to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,708	87.9%	56 min	0.53%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	1,159	86.5%	111 min	0.26%	A+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	266	84.5%	108 min	0.38%	B+
Envoy Airthin sample	89	81.6%	45 min	1.12%	B
Frontier Airlines	677	81.5%	89 min	1.48%	B
Southwest Airlines	1,860	79.6%	55 min	0.43%	B+

Delta leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 266 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's SLC to PHX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.5% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

American on SLC to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202563 flights82.5%
Oct–Dec 2025139 flights82.6%
Jan–Mar 202658 flights89.7%
Apr–Jun 20266 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 84.5% on time across 266 flights.

Quarter by quarter American on SLC to PHX held fairly steady: 82.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 82.6% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 89.7% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.6% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 77.8%. 13 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. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 4,433 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.

Carrier
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
36%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
6%

36% 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 4,433 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 4,433 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 2,205 of the 4,433 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, 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

6.0% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 507 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 runs 86.7% on time across 266 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 266 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 SLC to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 266 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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 265 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