Carrier route record
OODEN→PSP
SkyWest Airlines · Denver to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 576
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on DEN to PSP lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 576 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 879 at 78.7% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's DEN to PSP record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 47 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 572 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on DEN to PSP, 2,026 flights
These figures cover 576 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
SkyWest against every carrier on DEN to PSP
SkyWest flew 576 of the 2,026 flights on DEN to PSP, about 28% of it. Its 82.0% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 82.0% to Southwest at 67.4%. 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 78.7% 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 (this page) | 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+ |
United leads Southwest by 11 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
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.
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 34 points, against 11 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am55 flights87.3%
- 8am–11am66 flights90.9%
- 11am–2pm70 flights91.3%
- 2pm–5pm282 flights85.7%
- 5pm–8pm103 flights57.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 57.3% on time, against 91.3% 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 282 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on DEN to PSP through the year
July is the worst month at 54.8% on time, 39 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.8%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on DEN to PSP runs when it is late
SkyWest on DEN to PSP often beats the schedule: 186 of 572 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 103 late arrivals split 32 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 39 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early186 flights32.5%
- Within 15 min283 flights49.5%
- 15–29 min late32 flights5.6%
- 30–59 min late32 flights5.6%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights4.9%
- 2+ hours late11 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 572 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
17 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 18% of them. 25 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on DEN to PSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 August 2026, 12 hours 23 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 August 2026 | 12 hours 23 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 29 December 2025 | 4 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 June 2026 | 3 hours 48 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 October 2025 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 9 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,878 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 33%National Airspace System
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,395 of the 6,878 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,878 reported delay minutes.
33% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 2,286 minutes out of 6,878, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, 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 costs
6.8% 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 87.4% on time across 577 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 576 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. 576 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 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 572 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 PSP78.7%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to PSP67.4%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.