Carrier route record
WNTUL→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Tulsa to Phoenix
- Flights
- 603
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on TUL 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 603 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's TUL to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 597 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.0%
Every carrier on TUL to PHX, 1,276 flights
These figures cover 603 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 TUL to PHX
Southwest flew 603 of the 1,276 flights on TUL to PHX, about 47% of it. Its 82.6% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 82.6% to SkyWest at 81.0%. One 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
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 25 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–8am211 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am64 flights92.1%
- 11am–2pm51 flights90.0%
- 2pm–5pm109 flights68.2%
- 5pm–8pm70 flights69.6%
- 8pm–5am98 flights74.5%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.3% of the time, against 68.2% for the afternoon window. That is 25 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 211 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on TUL to PHX through the year
June is the worst month at 51.5% on time, 43 points below January, the best at 94.6%. 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 60 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 17 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 6,017 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% 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 6,017 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 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 6,017 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 93.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.9% 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.
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 69.4% on time across 603 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 603 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 TUL to PHX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 603 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 82.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 597 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUL to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to TUL, the return leg
- Envoy Air on TUL to PHX82.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on TUL to PHX81.0%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- 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.