Carrier route record
DLPSP→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Palm Springs to Seattle
- Flights
- 179
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. 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 391 at 87.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's PSP to SEA record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 96 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
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 1.89%
Whole route
87.4%
Every carrier on PSP to SEA, 1,638 flights
These figures cover 179 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on PSP to SEA
Delta flew 179 of the 1,638 flights on PSP to SEA, about 11% of it. Its 86.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 87.9% 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.
| 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 Lines (this page)thin 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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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%.
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.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on PSP to SEA runs when it is late
Delta on PSP to SEA often beats the schedule: 91 of 175 completed flights, 52%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 23 late arrivals split 8 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 8 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early91 flights52.0%
- Within 15 min61 flights34.9%
- 15–29 min late8 flights4.6%
- 30–59 min late7 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late5 flights2.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 175 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 31 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. No flight that left on time arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on PSP to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 1 February 2026, 17 hours 41 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 1 February 2026 | 17 hours 41 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 5 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 January 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 February 2026 | 2 hours 22 minutes | Carrier |
| 3 January 2026 | 2 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 54% of the 2,477 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Carrier
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,477 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 31 to one. 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. It accounts for 1,349 of the 2,477 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.23% against a national 1.89%, 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 8.3% 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 82.9% 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.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to SEA, every carrier
- Delta on SEA to PSP, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on PSP to SEA87.9%
- Alaska Airlines on PSP to SEA87.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.