Carrier route record
WNDEN→PSP
Southwest Airlines · Denver to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 541
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on DEN to PSP draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 541 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 576 at 82.0% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Southwest on DEN to PSP runs 10 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 99 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
67.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 537 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
76.6%
Every carrier on DEN to PSP, 2,026 flights
These figures cover 541 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on DEN to PSP
Southwest flew 541 of the 2,026 flights on DEN to PSP, about 27% of it. Its 67.4% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| 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 (this page) | 541 | 67.4% | 57 min | 0.55% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 82.0%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 35 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am114 flights87.7%
- 11am–2pm64 flights71.9%
- 2pm–5pm124 flights71.8%
- 5pm–8pm36 flights52.9%
- 8pm–5am203 flights54.2%
Scale runs 45% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 52.9% on time, against 87.7% for the 8am–11am 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 203 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on DEN to PSP through the year
June is the worst month at 40.6% on time, 42 points below March, the best at 82.4%. 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 68 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 72.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 57.1%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on DEN to PSP runs when it is late
The 175 late arrivals split 68 under half an hour, 53 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 54 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early55 flights10.2%
- Within 15 min307 flights57.2%
- 15–29 min late68 flights12.7%
- 30–59 min late53 flights9.9%
- 1–2 hours late30 flights5.6%
- 2+ hours late24 flights4.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 537 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
42 of 199 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 21% of them. 18 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on DEN to PSP
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 January 2026, 7 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 January 2026 | 7 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 August 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 August 2026 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 December 2025 | 3 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 3 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 9,979 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
62% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,979 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 9,979 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 87.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
10.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 80.0% on time across 542 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 541 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 Southwest on DEN to PSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 541 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 67.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 537 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to PSP, every carrier
- Southwest on PSP to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to PSP82.0%
- United Airlines on DEN to PSP78.7%
- Southwest 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 7.05 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.