Route reliability record
PDX→PSP
Portland to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 738
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 873 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 738 PDX to PSP flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
Best time to fly PDX to PSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.4% of the time and Sunday flights 86.8%, against 83.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 722 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
88.1% on time across 508 flights
These figures cover 738 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to PSP
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 508 | 88.1% | 43 min | 0.98% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 230 | 74.2% | 49 min | 2.17% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am120 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am117 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm152 flights89.9%
- 5pm–8pm342 flights78.4%
- 8pm–5am7 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.4% of the time, against 78.4% for the evening window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 342 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in September, when the on-time rate falls to 63.3%. January is the strongest month at 93.2%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. March was the busiest month here, with 117 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 80.2%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 5,330 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.
- 47%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,490 of the 5,330 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 5,330 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 90.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.81%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
The 873 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 94.5% on time across 737 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 738 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 738 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 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 722 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to PSP questions
How often is PDX to PSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.2% of the 738 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is PDX to PSP compared with the rest of the country?
83.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to PSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 12 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are September delays on PDX to PSP?
September is the weakest month at 63.3% on time, compared with 93.2% in January. Across the year that is 30 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to PSP88.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on PDX to PSP74.2%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.8%
- SFO to PSP, a related route76.7%
- PDX to LAX, a related route87.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record88.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record74.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. PDX to PSP and PSP to PDX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed PDX to PSP’s on-time badge on your site
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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.