Carrier route record
WNTPA→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Tampa to Phoenix
- Flights
- 489
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 40%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TPA to PHX lands a B+, 5 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 about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 489 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's TPA to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 46 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 488 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.20%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.1%
Every carrier on TPA to PHX, 1,223 flights
These figures cover 489 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
Southwest against every carrier on TPA to PHX
Southwest flew 489 of the 1,223 flights on TPA to PHX, about 40% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.2% to American at 78.7%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 489 | 82.2% | 59 min | 0.20% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 734 | 78.7% | 89 min | 0.54% | B+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 28 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–8am161 flights93.2%
- 8am–11am72 flights88.9%
- 11am–2pm54 flights88.9%
- 2pm–5pm84 flights72.6%
- 5pm–8pm113 flights65.2%
- 8pm–5am5 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.2% of the time, against 65.2% for the evening window. That is 28 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 161 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TPA to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 23 points below September, the best at 93.3%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 65.8%. 25 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 5,155 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 2,359 of the 5,155 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,155 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.20%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
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 61.5% on time across 489 flights, 21 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 21 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 489 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 Southwest on TPA to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 489 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 82.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to TPA, the return leg
- American Airlines on TPA to PHX78.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.