Carrier route record
OOPSP→DEN
SkyWest Airlines · Palm Springs to Denver
- Flights
- 577
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PSP to DEN earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 577 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 878 at 80.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PSP to DEN record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 101 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 573 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.52%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.5%
Every carrier on PSP to DEN, 2,027 flights
These figures cover 577 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 15 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
SkyWest against every carrier on PSP to DEN
SkyWest flew 577 of the 2,027 flights on PSP to DEN, about 28% of it. Its 87.4% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.4% to Frontier at 80.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 (this page) | 577 | 87.4% | 101 min | 0.52% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 878 | 80.8% | 73 min | 1.25% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 542 | 80.0% | 51 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 80.0% | 148 min | 0.00% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 80.8%, about a point 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 SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 577 flights.
- 5am–8am103 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am307 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm98 flights87.5%
- 2pm–5pm69 flights88.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.3% on time for the 5am–8am window against 86.2% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 307 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on PSP to DEN through the year
June is the worst month at 76.7% on time, 20 points below July, the best at 96.8%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 84 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late SkyWest on PSP to DEN runs when it is late
SkyWest on PSP to DEN often beats the schedule: 295 of 573 completed flights, 51%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 72 late arrivals split 20 under half an hour, 17 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early295 flights51.5%
- Within 15 min206 flights36.0%
- 15–29 min late20 flights3.5%
- 30–59 min late17 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late15 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late20 flights3.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 573 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
20 of 81 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. Only 11 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for SkyWest on PSP to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 October 2025, 10 hours 28 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in January 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 October 2025 | 10 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 January 2026 | 8 hours 32 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 3 January 2026 | 7 hours 12 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 1 October 2025 | 5 hours 34 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 January 2026 | 4 hours 53 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 55% of the 7,274 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
- 9%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,030 of the 7,274 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,274 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.52%, 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 close to two hours, 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.0% on time across 576 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 577 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 SkyWest on PSP to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 577 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 87.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 573 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to DEN, every carrier
- SkyWest on DEN to PSP, the return leg
- United Airlines on PSP to DEN80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on PSP to DEN80.0%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Denver International (DEN) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
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.