Route reliability record
DEN→PSP
Denver to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 2,026
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 776 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 2,026 DEN to PSP flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 576 at 82.0% on time.
Best time to fly DEN to PSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.2% of the time and Monday flights 80.0%, against 76.6% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.0% on time across 576 flights.
Key figures
On time
76.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,012 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
82.0% on time across 576 flights
These figures cover 2,026 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to PSP
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 82.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 67.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 541 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 576 | 82.0% | 67 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 879 | 78.7% | 55 min | 0.57% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 76.7% | 60 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 541 | 67.4% | 57 min | 0.55% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on DEN to PSP
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Denver to Palm Springs
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. DEN → PSPDenver to Palm Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 81.6% | 82.0% | 0.52% | 11am–2pm, Thu | OO 5469 15:45 |
| 2. DEN → PSPDenver to Palm Springs | United Airlines | 78.3% | 78.7% | 0.57% | 5am–8am, Mon | UA 1294 11:15 |
| 3. DEN → PSPDenver to Palm Springs | Southwest Airlines | 67.0% | 67.4% | 0.55% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 34 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am91 flights91.2%
- 8am–11am255 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm623 flights79.4%
- 2pm–5pm453 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm371 flights65.9%
- 8pm–5am233 flights57.1%
Scale runs 50% to 95%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 57.1% on time, against 91.2% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 623 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter DEN to PSP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On DEN to PSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.2% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 57.1%, a wide gap of 34.1 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.2%
- 8–11am88.6%
- 11am–2pm79.4%
- 2–5pm81.7%
- 5–8pm65.9%
- 8pm–5am57.1%
best all US flightsScale 50% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 59.8% on time, 25 points below November, the best at 84.4%. 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 223 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 73.0%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 20%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 to one. The split is drawn from 27,455 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 91.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.89% 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
7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
The 776 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.5% on time across 2,027 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,026 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 84.4% on time and June 59.8%, a swing of 25 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,012 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
DEN to PSP questions
How often is DEN to PSP delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.4% of the 2,026 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on DEN to PSP?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 82.0% on time across 576 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 67.4%, a gap of 15 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on DEN to PSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.2% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 57.1%, 34 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 DEN to PSP?
June is the weakest month at 59.8% on time, compared with 84.4% in November. Across the year that is 25 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
- PSP to DEN — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to PSP82.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to PSP78.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to PSP67.4%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.6%
- SFO to PSP, a related route73.9%
- DEN to SLC, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record82.0%
- United Airlines on-time record78.7%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record76.7%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. DEN to PSP and PSP to DEN are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed DEN to PSP’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.