Carrier route record
OODEN→PSP
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 575
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to PSP lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 575 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 872 at 78.8% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on DEN to PSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 570 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.70%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on DEN to PSP, 2,035 flights
These figures cover 575 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to PSP
SkyWest flew 575 of the 2,035 flights on DEN to PSP, about 28% of it. Its 80.2% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 80.2% to Southwest at 70.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 78.8% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 70.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 542 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 575 | 80.2% | 75 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 872 | 78.8% | 55 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 78.3% | 59 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 542 | 70.7% | 54 min | 0.18% | C+ |
United leads Southwest by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
SkyWest flight numbers on DEN to PSP
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am55 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am66 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm69 flights91.2%
- 2pm–5pm274 flights84.9%
- 5pm–8pm111 flights51.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 51.8% on time, against 91.2% for the 11am–2pm 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 274 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to PSP through the year
July is the worst month at 41.9% on time, 52 points below November, the best at 93.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 75.0%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 8,474 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.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 26%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
42% 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 8,474 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 8,474 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, 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 costs
8.2% 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 a little over 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.4% on time across 576 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 575 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 SkyWest on DEN to PSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 575 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 80.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 570 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to PSP, every carrier
- SkyWest on PSP to DEN, the return leg
- United Airlines on DEN to PSP78.8%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to PSP70.7%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.