Carrier route record

WNTUS→PHX

Southwest Airlines · Tucson to Phoenix

Flights: 237
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 7%
Carriers: 4

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

Southwest on TUS 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 237 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, Southwest's TUS to PHX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 237 completed flights

Avg delay

60 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on TUS to PHX, 3,397 flights

These figures cover 237 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 TUS to PHX

Southwest flew 237 of the 3,397 flights on TUS to PHX, about 7% of it. Its 82.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 Airlinesthin sample	338	84.7%	94 min	1.48%	B
SkyWest Airlines	2,251	83.1%	92 min	0.49%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)thin 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 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 33 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am118 flights95.8%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm9 flights—
2pm–5pm46 flights73.9%
5pm–8pm64 flights62.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 62.5% on time, against 95.8% 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 118 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on TUS to PHX through the year

Jan–Mar 202654 flights75.9%
Apr–Jun 2026183 flights84.7%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 82.7% on time across 237 flights.

Split by quarter, Southwest on TUS to PHX logged 54 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 183 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 82.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 91.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.5%. 18 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 62% of the 2,448 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
62%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
1%

62% 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 2,448 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 2,448 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 95.8% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.9% 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 about an hour, 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.9% on time across 236 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 237 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 TUS to PHX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 237 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 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 237 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