Carrier route record

ASSEA→PSP

Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Palm Springs

Flights: 1,057
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 64%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on SEA to PSP earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 1,057 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SEA to PSP record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,047 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.66%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.9%

Every carrier on SEA to PSP, 1,653 flights

These figures cover 1,057 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on SEA to PSP

Alaska flew 1,057 of the 1,653 flights on SEA to PSP, most of the route. Its 84.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 84.2% to Delta at 82.9%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to PSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)	1,057	84.2%	47 min	0.66%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	417	83.5%	53 min	0.72%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	179	82.9%	53 min	2.23%	B

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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am141 flights92.1%
8am–11am447 flights84.5%
11am–2pm136 flights79.1%
2pm–5pm204 flights82.6%
5pm–8pm90 flights80.9%
8pm–5am39 flights87.2%

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

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.1% on time against 92.1% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 447 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SEA to PSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 70.5% on time, against 93.3% in September. 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 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.4%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 7,796 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
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
34%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
1%

34% 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 7,796 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 32 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 7,796 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 3,374 of the 7,796 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.2% 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 runs 87.1% on time across 1,055 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,057 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 SEA to PSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,057 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,047 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