Route reliability record
PSP→DEN
Palm Springs to Denver
- Flights
- 2,036
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 776 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,036 PSP to DEN flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 576 at 87.4% on time.
Best time to fly PSP to DEN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 84.7%, against 81.6% for the route overall.
SkyWest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.4% on time across 576 flights.
Key figures
On time
81.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,014 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.4% on time across 576 flights
These figures cover 2,036 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 PSP to DEN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 87.4% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 77.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 543 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 576 | 87.4% | 110 min | 0.52% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 46 | 82.6% | 137 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 871 | 80.1% | 76 min | 1.15% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 543 | 77.7% | 59 min | 0.55% | B+ |
SkyWest leads Southwest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Palm Springs to Denver
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PSP → DENPalm Springs to Denver | SkyWest Airlines | 86.9% | 87.4% | 0.52% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 2. PSP → DENPalm Springs to Denver | United Airlines | 79.2% | 80.1% | 1.15% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 3. PSP → DENPalm Springs to Denver | Southwest Airlines | 77.3% | 77.7% | 0.55% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 19 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am506 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am429 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm711 flights77.8%
- 2pm–5pm388 flights71.3%
- 5pm–8pm2 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 71.3% for the afternoon window. That is 19 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 711 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 73.2% on time, 16 points below October, the best at 88.7%. 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 223 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.9%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 29,000 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
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 90.3% on time here. The split is drawn from 28,921 reported delay minutes.
No single cause dominates. carrier at 33%, late-arriving aircraft at 32% and national airspace system at 31% split the 29,000 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, 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 actually costs
7.4% 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 a little over 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. 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 77.0% on time across 2,035 flights, 5 points below 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.
The sample behind these figures is 2,036 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in DEN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 88.7% on time and July 73.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,014 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PSP to DEN questions
How often is PSP to DEN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.4% of the 2,036 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PSP to DEN?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 87.4% on time across 576 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 77.7%, a gap of 10 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PSP to DEN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 71.3%, 19 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 July delays on PSP to DEN?
July is the weakest month at 73.2% on time, compared with 88.7% in October. Across the year that is 16 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
- DEN to PSP — the return legseparate record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to DEN87.4%
- United Airlines on PSP to DEN80.1%
- Southwest Airlines on PSP to DEN77.7%
- PSP to SFO, a related route64.5%
- PHX to DEN, a related route77.2%
- PSP to SEA, a related route87.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record82.6%
- United Airlines on-time record80.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PSP to DEN and DEN to PSP are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.