Route profile
AUS→PHX
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Austin to Phoenix, 872 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 58% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,578 flights. How this is calculated
AUS → PHX arrives on time 80.1% of the time; the return trip, PHX → AUS, arrives on time 78.5% of the time.
AUS → PHX spends 21.0 minutes on the ground on an 872-mile trip: 14.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at AUS and 7.0 minutes from touchdown to gate at PHX.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why AUS → PHX flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
AUS → PHX cancelled 68 of 10,578 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 156. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 54.4% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 286 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 68 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
37 cancellations, 54.4% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
25 cancellations, 36.8% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
6 cancellations, 8.8% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
68 coded cancellations were recorded on AUS → PHX; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
40 min late
against a median of 6 min early
Percentiles over 10,578 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at PHX after arriving from AUS.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 35% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 19% | High risk |
| 60 min | 13% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 6.8% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.2% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.64% of the time and diverts 0.13% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,496 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 40 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,578 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
AUS → PHX flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 93.1% of the time, against 68.2% for 9 PM–5 AM departures, a gap of 24.9 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 94.3% on time from 194 flights
- 6 AM: 93.4% on time from 1,572 flights
- 7 AM: 93.7% on time from 400 flights
- 8 AM: 87.4% on time from 182 flights
- 9 AM: 90.6% on time from 280 flights
- 10 AM: 87.5% on time from 426 flights
- 11 AM: 89.1% on time from 483 flights
- 12 PM: 82.3% on time from 1,394 flights
- 1 PM: 77.8% on time from 440 flights
- 2 PM: 82.1% on time from 1,063 flights
- 3 PM: 72.3% on time from 724 flights
- 4 PM: 73.6% on time from 391 flights
- 5 PM: 66.1% on time from 506 flights
- 6 PM: 70.6% on time from 936 flights
- 7 PM: 66.7% on time from 656 flights
- 8 PM: 65.5% on time from 351 flights
- 9 PM: 69.5% on time from 412 flights
- 10 PM: 64.8% on time from 168 flights
- 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why AUS → PHX runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AUS → PHX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Late-arriving aircraft is the largest cause on AUS → PHX, at 50.4%: flights here mostly leave late because the plane came in late, and the day shows it: 5–9 AM departures arrived on time 93.1% of the time and 9 PM–5 AM departures 68.2%.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is PHX, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from PHX, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 3.9 times the normal rate at PHX against 1.7 times at AUS. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: AUS 1.6% against 0.9%, PHX 2.5% against 0.6%. Flights that did leave PHX in bad weather arrived on time 53.7% of the time, against 80.6% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | AUS | PHX |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.6% | 2.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.9% | 0.6% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 74.9% | 53.7% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 77.5% | 80.6% |
| Departures in bad weather | 22,580 | 6,215 |
Of the carriers on this route, Southwest Airlines (1.0% cancelled against 2.0% for the other carriers at AUS) cancelled the fewest departures from AUS in bad weather and American Airlines (2.7% cancelled against 1.3% for the other carriers at AUS) the most. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from AUS to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at AUS
All departures from AUS| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 9,022 | 1.0%below the others | 2.0% |
| American Airlines | 3,760 | 2.7%above the others | 1.3% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from AUS and PHX, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from AUS on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: AUS (airlines), PHX, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 6,265 | 78.9% | 0.69% | -5 min | 5.4% |
| American Airlines | 4,019 | 82.1% | 0.55% | -8 min | 9.0% |
| Frontier Airlines | 206 | 74.9% | 1.46% | -2 min | 9.9% |
Southwest Airlines flew 59.7% of the 10,490 flights listed.
American Airlines arrived on time 7.2 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 9.0 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 77.4%
- Feb: 86.0%
- Mar: 80.8%
- Apr: 80.8%
- May: 73.1%
- Jun: 74.5%
- Jul: 74.6%
- Aug: 84.9%
- Sep: 84.2%
- Oct: 82.1%
- Nov: 82.4%
- Dec: 82.7%
May is historically the weakest month and February the strongest, a spread of 12.9 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 80.5% from 263 flights
- August 2023: 84.8% from 273 flights
- September 2023: 80.1% from 285 flights
- October 2023: 80.3% from 304 flights
- November 2023: 83.7% from 295 flights
- December 2023: 79.5% from 304 flights
- January 2024: 70.3% from 302 flights
- February 2024: 84.7% from 282 flights
- March 2024: 76.8% from 312 flights
- April 2024: 79.1% from 301 flights
- May 2024: 70.3% from 314 flights
- June 2024: 78.6% from 283 flights
- July 2024: 71.3% from 290 flights
- August 2024: 86.0% from 274 flights
- September 2024: 91.1% from 260 flights
- October 2024: 90.3% from 301 flights
- November 2024: 87.8% from 280 flights
- December 2024: 83.2% from 281 flights
- January 2025: 84.6% from 260 flights
- February 2025: 89.4% from 255 flights
- March 2025: 83.8% from 330 flights
- April 2025: 81.6% from 316 flights
- May 2025: 73.5% from 308 flights
- June 2025: 76.2% from 257 flights
- July 2025: 72.6% from 260 flights
- August 2025: 83.7% from 247 flights
- September 2025: 81.3% from 236 flights
- October 2025: 76.0% from 309 flights
- November 2025: 75.5% from 285 flights
- December 2025: 85.5% from 290 flights
- January 2026: 78.6% from 275 flights
- February 2026: 84.1% from 271 flights
- March 2026: 81.4% from 348 flights
- April 2026: 81.6% from 317 flights
- May 2026: 75.7% from 297 flights
- June 2026: 68.2% from 248 flights
- July 2026: 74.2% from 265 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 78.9% against 83.3% in the 12 months before — declining by 4.4 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,578 AUS → PHX flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed