The sector is held by American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and ARINC.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
PHX Phoenix to SFO San Francisco
Phoenix Sky Harbor, the United States, to San Francisco International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 13.9 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,046 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 50m
- Door to door
- 8h 35m
What PHX to SFO looks like
The PHX to SFO sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
Phoenix PHX to San Francisco SFO is a short sector of 1,046 km by great circle, flown nonstop 13.9 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,046 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 50m.
Phoenix PHX is a major hub in the network held here, 172 scheduled destinations and 603.4 departures a day. San Francisco SFO has 189 destinations and 656.9 departures a day.
San Francisco runs one hour behind of Phoenix in January and no time shift at all in July, because the two ends do not change their clocks together.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on PHX to SFO from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| PHX to SFO | 13.86 | 97 | American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines |
| SFO to PHX | 13.57 | 95 | American Airlines, ARINC, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines |
6 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 13.9 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 192 departures a week on PHX to SFO, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 50m block time on PHX to SFO. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to PHX | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At PHX before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| PHX to SFO in the air, estimated | 110 min | 6h 20m |
| Formalities at SFO | 90 min | 7h 50m |
| Delivery run in San Francisco | 45 min | 8h 35m |
| Door to door | 515 min | 8h 35m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for PHX to SFO is 8h 35m.
A courier who leaves Phoenix at 09:00 local is on the ground in San Francisco at about 09:50 local and at the door by 12:05 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in San Francisco, the last useful departure from Phoenix is around 14:55 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 61 of them join PHX to SFO.
| Connecting at | PHX to hub, flights a day | Hub to SFO, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oakland OAK | 5.29 | 1.43 | 1,056 | 3h 22m |
| San Jose SJC | 7.86 | 1.43 | 1,048 | 3h 36m |
| San Diego SAN | 21 | 28 | 1,208 | 4h 02m |
| Las Vegas LAS | 18.14 | 21.71 | 1,076 | 4h 05m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 23.43 | 44 | 1,137 | 4h 10m |
| Salt Lake City SLC | 15.86 | 9.43 | 1,780 | 4h 32m |
With 13.9 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
61 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Oakland OAK, where the weaker of the two legs still runs about once a day.
Through OAK the routing covers 1,056 km against the 1,046 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 22m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 60 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 32m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, San Jose SJC at 3h 36m and San Diego SAN at 4h 02m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves San Francisco, Oakland OAK is 18 km away by great circle and carries 89 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through PHX or SFO. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Genentech, South San FranciscoBiotechnology research and manufacturing. The original biotech cluster, and still the densest. Logistics through San Francisco SFO.
Plan Phoenix to San Francisco yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for PHX to SFO in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The PHX airport entry
- The SFO airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Phoenix to Taipei
- The written lane, Dubai to San Francisco
- The written lane, San Francisco to Taipei
- The route calculator
More pairs through PHX and SFO: Phoenix to Seattle, Atlanta to Phoenix, Los Angeles to Phoenix, Phoenix to Chicago, London to Phoenix, Phoenix to Detroit, Phoenix to Boston, Phoenix to San Diego.