Carrier route record
WNPSP→DEN
Southwest Airlines · Palm Springs to Denver
- Flights
- 542
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PSP to DEN lands a B+, 3 points 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 50 minutes on average. That rests on 542 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 577 at 87.4% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PSP to DEN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 539 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.5%
Every carrier on PSP to DEN, 2,027 flights
These figures cover 542 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
Southwest against every carrier on PSP to DEN
Southwest flew 542 of the 2,027 flights on PSP to DEN, about 27% of it. Its 80.0% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 82.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 87.4% of the time; United Airlines manages 80.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 878 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 577 | 87.4% | 101 min | 0.52% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 878 | 80.8% | 73 min | 1.25% | B |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 542 | 80.0% | 51 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 80.0% | 148 min | 0.00% | B+ |
SkyWest leads United by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am195 flights90.2%
- 8am–11am80 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm130 flights81.5%
- 2pm–5pm137 flights60.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 50% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.2% of the time, against 60.0% for the afternoon window. That is 30 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 195 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on PSP to DEN through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 65.7%. August is the strongest month at 93.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 28 points. March was the busiest month here, with 68 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 71.8%, a spread of 15 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on PSP to DEN runs when it is late
The 108 late arrivals split 44 under half an hour, 35 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 29 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early114 flights21.2%
- Within 15 min317 flights58.8%
- 15–29 min late44 flights8.2%
- 30–59 min late35 flights6.5%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights3.7%
- 2+ hours late9 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 539 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
32 of 126 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 14 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on PSP to DEN
The latest arrival of the period was on 6 November 2025, 4 hours 10 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as national airspace system delay.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 6 November 2025 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 17 February 2026 | 4 hours 4 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 February 2026 | 3 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 17 January 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 December 2025 | 2 hours 49 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 5,482 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 13%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,482 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 36 to one. The split is drawn from 5,482 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,864 minutes out of 5,482, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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
5.4% 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 50 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 67.4% on time across 541 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 542 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 Southwest on PSP to DEN
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 542 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 539 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to DEN, every carrier
- Southwest on DEN to PSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to DEN87.4%
- United Airlines on PSP to DEN80.8%
- Southwest 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 7.05 million flight records
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.