Route reliability record
PSP→PHX
Palm Springs to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,445
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 261 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 2 points 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,445 PSP to PHX flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 721 at 80.5% on time.
Best time to fly PSP to PHX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.1%, against 79.6% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,431 completed flights
Avg delay
108 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
80.5% on time across 721 flights
These figures cover 1,445 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PSP to PHX
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 44 | 88.6% | 38 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 721 | 80.5% | 118 min | 1.11% | B |
| American Airlines | 680 | 78.0% | 101 min | 0.88% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 80.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on PSP to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Palm Springs to Phoenix
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 → PHXPalm Springs to Phoenix | SkyWest Airlines | 79.6% | 80.5% | 1.11% | 11am–2pm, Thu | OO 6406 06:39 |
| 2. PSP → PHXPalm Springs to Phoenix | American Airlines | 77.3% | 78.0% | 0.88% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 11 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am359 flights84.1%
- 8am–11am180 flights82.4%
- 11am–2pm365 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm184 flights73.5%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights75.1%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 84.1% of the time, against 73.5% for the afternoon window. That is 11 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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 72.5% on time, 15 points below May, the best at 87.2%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 141 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 72.5%. 14 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 48% of the 32,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 12%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 32,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 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 31,514 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 15,000 of the 32,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 261 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 78.3% on time across 1,445 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,445 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 PHX 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. May runs 87.2% on time and July 72.5%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,431 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PSP to PHX questions
How often is PSP to PHX delayed?
About 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 20.4% of the 1,445 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PSP to PHX?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 80.5% on time across 721 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 78.0%, a gap of 3 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 PHX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.5%, 11 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 PHX?
July is the weakest month at 72.5% on time, compared with 87.2% in May. Across the year that is 15 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
- PHX to PSP — the return legseparate record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to PHX80.5%
- American Airlines on PSP to PHX78.0%
- PSP to SFO, a related route64.5%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- PSP to DEN, a related route81.6%
- Envoy Air on-time record88.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.5%
- American Airlines on-time record78.0%
- 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 PHX and PHX 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.