Carrier route record
ASPSP→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Palm Springs to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,068
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 65%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,068 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 100 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,053 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
87.4%
Every carrier on PSP to SEA, 1,638 flights
These figures cover 1,068 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
Alaska against every carrier on PSP to SEA
Alaska flew 1,068 of the 1,638 flights on PSP to SEA, most of the route. Its 87.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.9% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 391 | 87.9% | 69 min | 0.77% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,068 | 87.3% | 60 min | 1.31% | A |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 179 | 86.9% | 108 min | 2.23% | A |
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 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.
- 5am–8am49 flights93.9%
- 8am–11am91 flights93.4%
- 11am–2pm250 flights91.1%
- 2pm–5pm303 flights84.1%
- 5pm–8pm305 flights83.4%
- 8pm–5am70 flights91.3%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.9% 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
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 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 85.5%, a spread of 5 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on PSP to SEA runs when it is late
Alaska on PSP to SEA often beats the schedule: 467 of 1,053 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 134 late arrivals split 56 under half an hour, 41 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early467 flights44.3%
- Within 15 min452 flights42.9%
- 15–29 min late56 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late41 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights1.9%
- 2+ hours late17 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,053 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 160 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 53 still arrived on time. 27 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on PSP to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 14 December 2025, 7 hours 33 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 14 December 2025 | 7 hours 33 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 18 February 2026 | 5 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 25 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 16 March 2026 | 3 hours 57 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 October 2025 | 3 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 8,040 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,040 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 8,040 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 93.9% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.31% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 83.6% on time across 1,071 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,068 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. 1,068 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 87.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,053 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to PSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to SEA87.9%
- Delta Air Lines on PSP to SEA86.9%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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.