Route reliability record
PSP→SEA
Palm Springs to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,638
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 987 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 about an hour. That rests on 1,638 PSP to SEA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 391 at 87.9% on time.
Best time to fly PSP to SEA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.4%, against 87.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's 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 1,615 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.28%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
87.9% on time across 391 flights
These figures cover 1,638 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
Which airline is most reliable on PSP to SEA
The two carriers here are closely matched: half 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 | 391 | 87.9% | 69 min | 0.77% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,068 | 87.3% | 60 min | 1.31% | A |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 179 | 86.9% | 108 min | 2.23% | A |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 87.9%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Palm Springs to Seattle
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 → SEAPalm Springs to Seattle | SkyWest Airlines | 87.2% | 87.9% | 0.77% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. PSP → SEAPalm Springs to Seattle | Alaska Airlines | 86.2% | 87.3% | 1.31% | 5am–8am, 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 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 1,638 flights.
- 5am–8am329 flights88.0%
- 8am–11am202 flights91.6%
- 11am–2pm250 flights91.1%
- 2pm–5pm482 flights85.1%
- 5pm–8pm305 flights83.4%
- 8pm–5am70 flights91.3%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.6% of the time, against 83.4% for the evening window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 482 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PSP to SEA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On PSP to SEA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 91.6% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 83.4%, a real gap of 8.2 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am88.0%
- 8–11am91.6%
- 11am–2pm91.1%
- 2–5pm85.1%
- 5–8pm83.4%
- 8pm–5am91.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
December is the weak month at 81.6% on time, against 94.4% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. April was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 85.0%, a spread of 6 points.
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 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 20 to one. The split is drawn from 13,748 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,547 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.28% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.12%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 987 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 82.7% on time across 1,641 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 1,638 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 SEA 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. September runs 94.4% on time and December 81.6%, a swing of 13 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,615 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PSP to SEA questions
How often is PSP to SEA delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 12.6% of the 1,638 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PSP to SEA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 87.9% on time across 391 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 87.3%, a gap of half a point. 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 SEA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.6% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 83.4%, 8 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 December delays on PSP to SEA?
December is the weakest month at 81.6% on time, compared with 94.4% in September. Across the year that is 13 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
- SEA to PSP — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to SEA87.9%
- Alaska Airlines on PSP to SEA87.3%
- Delta Air Lines on PSP to SEA86.9%
- PSP to SFO, a related route61.1%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.0%
- PSP to DEN, a related route82.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record87.9%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record87.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record86.9%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. PSP to SEA and SEA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.