Route reliability record
SFO→PSP
San Francisco to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 2,504
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 421 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,504 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,472 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
75.3% on time across 2,163 flights
These figures cover 2,504 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% 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
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to PSP
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 307 | 87.5% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,163 | 75.3% | 78 min | 1.20% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 72.7% | 65 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 58.3% | 65 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 21 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–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am585 flights88.6%
- 11am–2pm383 flights67.9%
- 2pm–5pm618 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm376 flights82.8%
- 8pm–5am518 flights71.3%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. 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 67.9% on time against 88.6% for 8am–11am. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 618 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
June is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 30 points below January, the best at 87.7%. 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 248 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 84.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 71.2%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 44,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%National Airspace System
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 2%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. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 43,955 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 18,000 minutes out of 44,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.24%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.3% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 64.5% on time across 2,520 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,504 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 87.7% on time and June 58.2%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 2,472 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to PSP questions
How often is SFO to PSP delayed?
About one flight in four arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.3% of the 2,504 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is SFO to PSP compared with the rest of the country?
76.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to PSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 67.9%, 21 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 June delays on SFO to PSP?
June is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 87.7% in January. Across the year that is 30 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 SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record87.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record75.3%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SFO to PSP and PSP to SFO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.