Carrier route record
UADEN→PSP
United Airlines · Denver to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 872
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 43%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 872 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 575 at 80.2% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, 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.
Key figures
On time
78.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 867 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on DEN to PSP, 2,035 flights
These figures cover 872 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on DEN to PSP
United flew 872 of the 2,035 flights on DEN to PSP, about 43% of it. Its 78.8% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 80.2% 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 | 575 | 80.2% | 75 min | 0.70% | B+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 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+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on DEN to PSP
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 24 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am36 flights97.2%
- 8am–11am48 flights95.7%
- 11am–2pm487 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm46 flights84.4%
- 5pm–8pm225 flights73.2%
- 8pm–5am30 flights76.7%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.2% of the time, against 73.2% for the evening window. That is 24 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 487 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on DEN to PSP through the year
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 85.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 10,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 22%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
44% 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 10,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 10,089 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 0.46%, 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
6.5% 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 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. 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 runs 80.1% on time across 871 flights, within about a point 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. 872 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. 872 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 78.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 867 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DEN to PSP, every carrier
- United on PSP to DEN, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on DEN to PSP80.2%
- Southwest Airlines on DEN to PSP70.7%
- United 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.