Carrier route record

UASFO→PSP

United Airlines · San Francisco to Palm Springs

Flights: 307
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 4

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

United on SFO to PSP earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 307 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to PSP record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 304 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

76.7%

Every carrier on SFO to PSP, 2,504 flights

These figures cover 307 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

United against every carrier on SFO to PSP

United flew 307 of the 2,504 flights on SFO to PSP, about 12% of it. Its 87.5% on time is 11 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 87.5% to Alaska at 58.3%. Two 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 SFO to PSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin 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

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 38 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–8am—
8am–11am232 flights94.8%
11am–2pm6 flights—
2pm–5pm50 flights57.1%
5pm–8pm16 flights—
8pm–5am3 flights—

Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.8% of the time, against 57.1% for the afternoon window. That is 38 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 232 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on SFO to PSP through the year

Jul–Sep 20256 flights—
Oct–Dec 2025105 flights90.5%
Jan–Mar 202693 flights97.8%
Apr–Jun 2026103 flights74.5%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 87.5% on time across 307 flights.

United on SFO to PSP did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 97.8% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 74.5%, a swing of 23 points on roughly 102 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.2%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,133 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
52%
Carrier
39%
National Airspace System
9%

52% 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 2,133 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 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 2,133 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, 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 839 of the 2,133 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.9% 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.

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 58.8% on time across 307 flights, 29 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 29 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 307 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 United on SFO to PSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 307 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 87.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 304 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