Route reliability record
XNA→PHX
Bentonville to Phoenix
- Flights
- 830
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,023 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 830 XNA to PHX flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly XNA to PHX: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.6% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.2%, against 86.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 91 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 827 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Envoy
88.3% on time across 701 flights
These figures cover 830 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 XNA to PHX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Air | 701 | 88.3% | 72 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 78.7% | 44 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 2 | 50.0% | 29 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on XNA to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 830 flights.
- 5am–8am3 flights—
- 8am–11am363 flights90.6%
- 11am–2pm6 flights—
- 2pm–5pm355 flights83.1%
- 5pm–8pm100 flights87.0%
- 8pm–5am3 flights—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.6% on time for the 8am–11am window against 83.1% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 78.3% on time, 15 points below March, the best at 93.4%. 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 91 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.8%. 13 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 7,118 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Carrier
- 15%Extreme weather
- 11%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.5 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,118 reported delay minutes.
57% 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 7,118 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 are rare at 0.36%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 1,023 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 runs 85.8% on time across 827 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. 830 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 830 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 86.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 827 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
XNA to PHX questions
How often is XNA to PHX delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.3% of the 830 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is XNA to PHX compared with the rest of the country?
86.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on XNA to PHX?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 83.1%, 8 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 XNA to PHX?
June is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 93.4% in March. Across the year that is 15 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 XNA — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on XNA to PHX88.3%
- American Airlines on XNA to PHX78.7%
- XNA to DFW, a related route78.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- XNA to ORD, a related route75.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.3%
- American Airlines on-time record78.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record50.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. XNA to PHX and PHX to XNA 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.