Route reliability record
SFO→PSP
San Francisco to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 2,577
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 421 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 2,577 SFO to PSP flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to PSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 81.3%, against 73.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
73.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,545 completed flights
Avg delay
75 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
72.1% on time across 2,236 flights
These figures cover 2,577 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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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+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 22 | 72.7% | 65 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 2,236 | 72.1% | 77 min | 1.16% | C |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 12 | 58.3% | 65 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to PSP
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 24 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am24 flights—
- 8am–11am580 flights86.5%
- 11am–2pm529 flights62.1%
- 2pm–5pm568 flights70.5%
- 5pm–8pm384 flights77.9%
- 8pm–5am492 flights71.4%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. 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 62.1% on time against 86.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 580 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO 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 SFO to PSP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 62.1%, a wide gap of 24.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.5%
- 11am–2pm62.1%
- 2–5pm70.5%
- 5–8pm77.9%
- 8pm–5am71.4%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
August is the worst month at 56.2% on time, 32 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 81.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 67.2%, a spread of 14 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 50,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%National Airspace System
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 22,000 minutes out of 50,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 49,916 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.5% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.23%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection 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 61.1% on time across 2,598 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,577 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. January runs 87.7% on time and August 56.2%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,545 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.1% of the 2,577 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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?
73.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 points against it. That is worth a C 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 86.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 62.1%, 24 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 August delays on SFO to PSP?
August is the weakest month at 56.2% on time, compared with 87.7% in January. Across the year that is 32 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 SFO to PSP87.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to PSP72.1%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- DEN to PSP, a related route76.6%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- United Airlines on-time record87.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.7%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record72.1%
- 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. 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.
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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.