Route reliability record
TUL→PHX
Tulsa to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,276
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 935 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 4 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 1,276 TUL to PHX flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 603 at 82.6% on time.
Best time to fly TUL to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.4% of the time and Thursday flights 83.6%, against 82.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,268 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.6% on time across 603 flights
These figures cover 1,276 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 TUL to PHX
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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 603 | 82.6% | 58 min | 1.00% | B |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 271 | 82.3% | 55 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 402 | 81.0% | 156 min | 0.25% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 82.6%, 2 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 Tulsa 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. TUL → PHXTulsa to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 81.8% | 82.6% | 1.00% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
| 2. TUL → PHXTulsa to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 80.8% | 81.0% | 0.25% | 2pm–5pm, Fri | — |
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 21 points, against 2 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am212 flights93.4%
- 8am–11am426 flights85.1%
- 11am–2pm51 flights90.0%
- 2pm–5pm306 flights77.0%
- 5pm–8pm183 flights72.0%
- 8pm–5am98 flights74.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.4% of the time, against 72.0% for the evening window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 426 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
June is the worst month at 69.6% on time, 17 points below March, the best at 86.9%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 122 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.4%. 8 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. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 20,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
41% 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 20,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 20,485 reported delay minutes.
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 9,372 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
6.3% 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.
The 935 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 75.1% on time across 1,277 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,276 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. March runs 86.9% on time and June 69.6%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,268 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TUL to PHX questions
How often is TUL to PHX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.0% of the 1,276 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
Which airline is most reliable on TUL to PHX?
Southwest Airlines leads at 82.6% on time across 603 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 81.0%, a gap of 2 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 TUL to PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 72.0%, 21 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 June delays on TUL to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 69.6% on time, compared with 86.9% in March. Across the year that is 17 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 TUL — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on TUL to PHX82.6%
- Envoy Air on TUL to PHX82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on TUL to PHX81.0%
- TUL to DFW, a related route77.8%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- TUL to DEN, a related route79.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record81.0%
- 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. TUL to PHX and PHX to TUL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.