Carrier route record
OOPSP→SFO
SkyWest Airlines · Palm Springs to San Francisco
- Flights
- 2,178
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 86%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on PSP to SFO draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 2,178 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so SkyWest on PSP to SFO runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 119 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,130 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.96%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
64.5%
Every carrier on PSP to SFO, 2,520 flights
These figures cover 2,178 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on PSP to SFO
SkyWest flew 2,178 of the 2,520 flights on PSP to SFO, most of the route. Its 65.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 64.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 65.7% to Alaska at 23.1%. Three 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 (this page) | 2,178 | 65.7% | 67 min | 0.96% | C+ |
| United Airlinesthin sample | 307 | 58.8% | 96 min | 0.33% | D+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 54.5% | 73 min | 0.00% | F+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 23.1% | 72 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Departure window
When SkyWest 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 2,178 flights.
- 5am–8am406 flights64.7%
- 8am–11am445 flights63.7%
- 11am–2pm335 flights70.6%
- 2pm–5pm429 flights67.8%
- 5pm–8pm563 flights63.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 70.6% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 63.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 563 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on PSP to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 33.1%. January is the strongest month at 85.6%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 52 points. March was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 72.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 61.2%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 49,000 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.
- 53%National Airspace System
- 31%Carrier
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
53% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 26,000 minutes out of 49,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 49,048 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.96% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 13.4% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 421 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.3% on time across 2,163 flights, 10 points above 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,178 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.
What to do with this
Booking SkyWest on PSP to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 85.6% on time and May 33.1%, a swing of 52 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 2,130 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
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.