Carrier route record

F9SNA→PHX

Frontier Airlines · Santa Ana to Phoenix

Flights: 288
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 6%
Carriers: 3

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

Frontier on SNA to PHX lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 288 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 2,426 at 83.2% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Frontier's SNA to PHX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 56 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 280 completed flights

Avg delay

92 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.43%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on SNA to PHX, 4,608 flights

These figures cover 288 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

Frontier against every carrier on SNA to PHX

Frontier flew 288 of the 4,608 flights on SNA to PHX, about 6% of it. Its 83.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 83.2% to American at 81.0%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on SNA to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	2,426	83.2%	47 min	0.66%	B+
Frontier Airlines (this page)thin sample	288	83.2%	92 min	2.43%	B
American Airlines	1,894	81.0%	82 min	0.58%	B+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 83.2%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Frontier runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am46 flights86.7%
11am–2pm46 flights91.1%
2pm–5pm94 flights84.9%
5pm–8pm67 flights75.8%
8pm–5am35 flights77.1%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 91.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 75.8%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 94 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Frontier on SNA to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202568 flights86.6%
Oct–Dec 202569 flights73.5%
Jan–Mar 202696 flights86.2%
Apr–Jun 202655 flights86.3%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 83.2% on time across 288 flights.

Frontier on SNA to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 86.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 73.5%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 72 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 94.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.9%. 23 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Frontier runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 4,341 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
54%
Carrier
36%
National Airspace System
9%
Extreme weather
1%

54% 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 4,341 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 4,341 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 1,580 of the 4,341 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.43% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.

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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 338 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.3% on time across 288 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 288 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 Frontier on SNA to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 288 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 83.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 280 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