Carrier route record
OOSLC→PHX
SkyWest Airlines · Salt Lake City to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,159
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on SLC 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 9 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 1,159 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 three carriers covered here at 87.9% on time across 1,708 flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,155 completed flights
Avg delay
111 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.9%
Every carrier on SLC to PHX, 5,759 flights
These figures cover 1,159 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 SLC to PHX
SkyWest flew 1,159 of the 5,759 flights on SLC to PHX, about 20% of it. Its 86.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.9% to Southwest at 79.6%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,708 | 87.9% | 56 min | 0.53% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 1,159 | 86.5% | 111 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin 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.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on SLC to PHX
Departure window
When SkyWest 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 1,159 flights.
- 5am–8am240 flights82.8%
- 8am–11am341 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm213 flights85.9%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights87.2%
- 5pm–8pm316 flights83.8%
- 8pm–5am2 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 82.8% for the early window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 341 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on SLC to PHX through the year
Delays peak in November, when the on-time rate falls to 76.6%. August is the strongest month at 94.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. March was the busiest month here, with 153 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.1%. 11 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 64% of the 17,000 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.
- 64%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 4%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, 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 11,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,328 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.1% on time across 1,159 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,159 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 SkyWest on SLC to PHX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. August runs 94.6% on time and November 76.6%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,155 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SLC to PHX, every carrier
- SkyWest on PHX to SLC, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SLC to PHX87.9%
- American Airlines on SLC to PHX84.5%
- Frontier Airlines on SLC to PHX81.5%
- Southwest Airlines on SLC to PHX79.6%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.