Carrier route record
AASTL→PHX
American Airlines · St. Louis to Phoenix
- Flights
- 548
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on STL to PHX lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.9 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 548 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's STL to PHX record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 542 completed flights
Avg delay
172 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.91%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.3%
Every carrier on STL to PHX, 2,284 flights
These figures cover 548 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on STL to PHX
American flew 548 of the 2,284 flights on STL to PHX, about 24% of it. Its 81.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Southwest at 72.2%. Three 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 30 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 53 | 83.0% | 93 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 53 | 82.7% | 210 min | 1.89% | B |
| American Airlines (this page) | 548 | 81.7% | 172 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,600 | 72.2% | 51 min | 0.31% | C+ |
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on STL 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 12 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–8am130 flights82.0%
- 8am–11am167 flights86.0%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm211 flights80.0%
- 5pm–8pm38 flights73.7%
- 8pm–5am1 flights—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.0% of the time, against 73.7% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 211 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on STL to PHX through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 90.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 61 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.5%. 14 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 66% 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.
- 66%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 66%, 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 17,031 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.91% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,262 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 79.1% on time across 547 flights, within 3 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. 548 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 STL to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 548 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 542 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- STL to PHX, every carrier
- American on PHX to STL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on STL to PHX72.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.