Carrier route record

AATUS→PHX

American Airlines · Tucson to Phoenix

Flights: 338
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on TUS to PHX earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 338 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Envoy Air, flew 571 at 86.6% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, American's TUS to PHX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 333 completed flights

Avg delay

94 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.48%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on TUS to PHX, 3,397 flights

These figures cover 338 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

American against every carrier on TUS to PHX

American flew 338 of the 3,397 flights on TUS to PHX, about 10% of it. Its 84.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 86.6% to Southwest at 82.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on TUS to PHX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Envoy Air	571	86.6%	70 min	0.53%	A+
American Airlines (this page)thin sample	338	84.7%	94 min	1.48%	B
SkyWest Airlines	2,251	83.1%	92 min	0.49%	B+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	237	82.7%	60 min	0.00%	B+

No carrier stands out. Envoy tops the table at 86.6%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 38 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am37 flights94.6%
8am–11am85 flights89.2%
11am–2pm77 flights87.0%
2pm–5pm43 flights82.9%
5pm–8pm66 flights84.6%
8pm–5am30 flights56.7%

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 56.7% on time, against 94.6% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 85 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

American on TUS to PHX through the year

Jul–Sep 202565 flights76.9%
Oct–Dec 2025156 flights83.8%
Jan–Mar 202676 flights87.8%
Apr–Jun 202641 flights95.0%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.7% on time across 338 flights.

American on TUS to PHX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 95.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 76.9%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 85 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 96.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 78.8%. 18 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 51% of the 4,795 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
51%
Extreme weather
28%
National Airspace System
13%
Carrier
7%

Extreme weather accounts for 28% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 4.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,795 reported delay minutes.

51% 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 4,795 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 2 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.

Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

7.8% 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.

At 109 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 83.8% on time across 338 flights, within about a point 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. 338 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 TUS to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 338 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 333 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures