Carrier route record

DLPSP→SEA

Delta Air Lines · Palm Springs to Seattle

Flights: 179
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 11%
Carriers: 3

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

Delta on PSP to SEA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 179 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 415 at 87.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PSP to SEA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 93 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 175 completed flights

Avg delay

108 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.23%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.1%

Every carrier on PSP to SEA, 1,649 flights

These figures cover 179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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

Delta against every carrier on PSP to SEA

Delta flew 179 of the 1,649 flights on PSP to SEA, about 11% of it. Its 86.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.3% to Delta at 86.9%.

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.

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	1,055	87.1%	58 min	1.33%	A
Delta Air Lines (this page)thin sample	179	86.9%	108 min	2.23%	A

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 87.3%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

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 179 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's PSP to SEA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 86.9% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Delta on PSP to SEA through the year

Oct–Dec 202553 flights94.1%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights80.7%
Apr–Jun 202636 flights91.7%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 86.9% on time across 179 flights.

Delta on PSP to SEA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 94.1% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 80.7%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 60 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 2,477 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
42%
National Airspace System
2%
Extreme weather
1%

42% 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 2,477 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 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 2,477 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 54%, 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 1,349 of the 2,477 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.9% on time across 179 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. 179 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 Delta on PSP to SEA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 179 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 86.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 175 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