Carrier route record

OOSEA→PSP

SkyWest Airlines · Seattle to Palm Springs

Flights: 417
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on SEA to PSP lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 417 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SEA to PSP record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 59 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 413 completed flights

Avg delay

53 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.72%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.9%

Every carrier on SEA to PSP, 1,653 flights

These figures cover 417 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SEA to PSP

SkyWest flew 417 of the 1,653 flights on SEA to PSP, about 25% of it. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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	1,057	84.2%	47 min	0.66%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	417	83.5%	53 min	0.72%	B+
Delta Air Linesthin sample	179	82.9%	53 min	2.23%	B

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 417 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm1 flights—
5pm–8pm190 flights83.1%
8pm–5am226 flights83.9%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 83.9% on time across 226 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 226 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SEA to PSP through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, June worst

June is the worst month at 73.3% on time, 20 points below August, the best at 93.0%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.0%. 10 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 3,607 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
Carrier
43%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
5%

45% 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 3,607 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 3,607 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 1,536 of the 3,607 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, 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 4.1% 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 87.3% on time across 415 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 417 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 SkyWest on SEA to PSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 417 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 413 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