Carrier route record

UADEN→PSP

United Airlines · Denver to Palm Springs

Flights: 879
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on DEN to PSP lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That rests on 879 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 576 at 82.0% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate United on DEN to PSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 873 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.57%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.6%

Every carrier on DEN to PSP, 2,026 flights

These figures cover 879 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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.

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Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on DEN to PSP

United flew 879 of the 2,026 flights on DEN to PSP, about 43% of it. Its 78.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on DEN to PSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	576	82.0%	67 min	0.52%	B+
United Airlines (this page)	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

United flight numbers on DEN to PSP

UA 129411:1577.5% · 343 flights

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Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am36 flights97.2%
8am–11am48 flights95.7%
11am–2pm486 flights78.5%
2pm–5pm47 flights84.8%
5pm–8pm232 flights71.7%
8pm–5am30 flights76.7%

Scale runs 65% to 100%.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.2% of the time, against 71.7% for the evening window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 486 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on DEN to PSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.March best, May worst

Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 68.0%. March is the strongest month at 85.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 18 points. January was the busiest month here, with 119 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late United on DEN to PSP runs when it is late

United on DEN to PSP often beats the schedule: 237 of 873 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 186 late arrivals split 68 under half an hour, 65 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 53 an hour or more.

15+ min early237 flights27.1%
Within 15 min450 flights51.5%
15–29 min late68 flights7.8%
30–59 min late65 flights7.4%
1–2 hours late35 flights4.0%
2+ hours late18 flights2.1%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 873 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

32 of 164 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 54 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PSP.

The worst days

Worst days for United on DEN to PSP

The latest arrival of the period was on 14 August 2026, 5 hours 8 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of United on DEN to PSP in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
14 August 2026	5 hours 8 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
4 January 2026	5 hours	National Airspace System
26 January 2026	4 hours 50 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
2 October 2025	3 hours 56 minutes	Carrier
21 August 2026	3 hours 53 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 10,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
33%
National Airspace System
23%
Extreme weather
0%

44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 to one. The split is drawn from 10,176 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 97.2% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, 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

6.1% 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 55 minutes, 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 runs 80.8% on time across 878 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 879 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 United on DEN to PSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 879 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 78.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 873 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures