Route reliability record
TPA→PHX
Tampa to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,223
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,788 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,223 TPA to PHX flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 489 at 82.2% on time.
Best time to fly TPA to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Saturday flights 84.3%, against 80.1% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,216 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.2% on time across 489 flights
These figures cover 1,223 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to PHX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 489 | 82.2% | 59 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 734 | 78.7% | 89 min | 0.54% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 82.2%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Tampa to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. TPA → PHXTampa to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 82.0% | 82.2% | 0.20% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. TPA → PHXTampa to Phoenix | American Airlines | 78.3% | 78.7% | 0.54% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am370 flights91.1%
- 8am–11am305 flights82.9%
- 11am–2pm62 flights90.3%
- 2pm–5pm111 flights73.6%
- 5pm–8pm369 flights66.8%
- 8pm–5am6 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 66.8% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 370 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 128 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 19,000 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.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
47% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 18,885 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 7,031 of the 19,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, 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 actually 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 1,788 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.4% on time across 1,222 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,223 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.4% on time and May 67.5%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,216 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to PHX questions
How often is TPA to PHX delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.9% of the 1,223 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to PHX?
Southwest Airlines leads at 82.2% on time across 489 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 78.7%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 66.8%, 24 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are May delays on TPA to PHX?
May is the weakest month at 67.5% on time, compared with 91.4% in September. Across the year that is 24 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to PHX82.2%
- American Airlines on TPA to PHX78.7%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.9%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.2%
- American Airlines on-time record78.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. TPA to PHX and PHX to TPA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed TPA to PHX’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.