Carrier route record

ASPSP→SEA

Alaska Airlines · Palm Springs to Seattle

Flights: 1,055
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 64%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on PSP to SEA 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,055 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PSP to SEA record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 95 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,040 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.33%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.1%

Every carrier on PSP to SEA, 1,649 flights

These figures cover 1,055 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on PSP to SEA

Alaska flew 1,055 of the 1,649 flights on PSP to SEA, most of the route. Its 87.1% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to Delta at 86.9%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.

On-time performance by carrier on PSP to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
SkyWest Airlines	415	87.3%	67 min	0.72%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	1,055	87.1%	58 min	1.33%	A
Delta Air Linesthin sample	179	86.9%	108 min	2.23%	A

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am36 flights94.4%
8am–11am91 flights93.4%
11am–2pm250 flights91.1%
2pm–5pm303 flights83.8%
5pm–8pm305 flights83.4%
8pm–5am70 flights91.3%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.4% of the time, against 83.4% for the evening 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 305 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PSP to SEA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 74.0% on time, against 94.9% in April. 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 156 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.7%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 7,744 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
53%
Carrier
24%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
3%

53% 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 7,744 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 7,744 reported delay minutes.

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 94.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.33% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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. 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 runs 84.2% on time across 1,057 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,055 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 Alaska on PSP to SEA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,055 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 87.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,040 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures