Route reliability record
SEA→PSP
Seattle to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 1,641
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 987 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,641 SEA to PSP flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 1,071 at 83.6% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to PSP: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.6%, against 82.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,621 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
83.6% on time across 1,071 flights
These figures cover 1,641 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to PSP
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,071 | 83.6% | 47 min | 0.65% | B+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 179 | 82.9% | 53 min | 2.23% | B |
| SkyWest Airlines | 391 | 80.3% | 52 min | 1.28% | B |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 83.6%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Seattle to Palm Springs
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SEA → PSPSeattle to Palm Springs | Alaska Airlines | 83.1% | 83.6% | 0.65% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SEA → PSPSeattle to Palm Springs | SkyWest Airlines | 79.3% | 80.3% | 1.28% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am141 flights92.1%
- 8am–11am447 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm315 flights81.2%
- 2pm–5pm205 flights82.7%
- 5pm–8pm218 flights81.0%
- 8pm–5am315 flights79.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 79.7% for the overnight window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 447 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SEA to PSP by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SEA to PSP, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 92.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 79.7%, a wide gap of 12.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am92.1%
- 8–11am83.8%
- 11am–2pm81.2%
- 2–5pm82.7%
- 5–8pm81.0%
- 8pm–5am79.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 22 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
July is the worst month at 69.5% on time, 22 points below May, the best at 91.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. April was the busiest month here, with 216 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 13,684 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 5,497 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 87.4% on time across 1,638 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,641 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 91.7% on time and July 69.5%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,621 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to PSP questions
How often is SEA to PSP delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.3% of the 1,641 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to PSP?
Alaska Airlines leads at 83.6% on time across 1,071 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 80.3%, a gap of 3 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SEA to PSP?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 79.7%, 12 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are July delays on SEA to PSP?
July is the weakest month at 69.5% on time, compared with 91.7% in May. Across the year that is 22 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PSP to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to PSP83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to PSP82.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on SEA to PSP80.3%
- SEA to LAX, a related route82.0%
- SFO to PSP, a related route73.9%
- SEA to PHX, a related route78.2%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record83.6%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record82.9%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record80.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SEA to PSP and PSP to SEA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.