Carrier route record

AASMF→PHX

American Airlines · Sacramento to Phoenix

Flights: 1,076
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 29%
Carriers: 4

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

American on SMF 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 close to two hours. That rests on 1,076 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's SMF to PHX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 98 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,069 completed flights

Avg delay

103 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.56%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.5%

Every carrier on SMF to PHX, 3,668 flights

These figures cover 1,076 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

American against every carrier on SMF to PHX

American flew 1,076 of the 3,668 flights on SMF to PHX, about 29% of it. Its 87.4% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 87.4% to Southwest at 79.0%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on SMF to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)	1,076	87.4%	103 min	0.56%	A+
Envoy Airthin sample	112	80.2%	65 min	0.89%	B+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	333	79.5%	65 min	0.30%	B+
Southwest Airlines	2,147	79.0%	50 min	0.51%	B+

Flight by flight

American flight numbers on SMF to PHX

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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am343 flights92.9%
8am–11am189 flights93.1%
11am–2pm354 flights83.0%
2pm–5pm95 flights83.0%
5pm–8pm95 flights76.3%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 76.3% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 354 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on SMF to PHX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, October worst

April is the best month on the calendar at 95.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 121 flights.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 82.1%. 9 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 58% of the 14,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
58%
Carrier
35%
National Airspace System
6%
Extreme weather
1%

58% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 58 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 13,865 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 4,854 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.56%, 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

5.7% 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 647 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 82.4% on time across 1,079 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,076 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 SMF to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,076 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 87.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,069 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