Route reliability record
SLC→PSP
Salt Lake City to Palm Springs
- Flights
- 1,080
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 541 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 1,080 SLC to PSP flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SLC to PSP: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 95.5%, against 91.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,076 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.37%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
92.4% on time across 1,009 flights
These figures cover 1,080 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SLC 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,009 | 92.4% | 54 min | 0.40% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 71 | 83.1% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SLC 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 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 1,080 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am207 flights96.1%
- 11am–2pm158 flights89.9%
- 2pm–5pm351 flights88.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am364 flights94.0%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 88.0% for the afternoon window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SLC 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 SLC to PSP, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 96.1% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 88.0%, a real gap of 8.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am96.1%
- 11am–2pm89.9%
- 2–5pm88.0%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am94.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
February is the weak month at 79.8% on time, against 100.0% in June. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 89.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 57% of the 4,800 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 57%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 19%Extreme weather
- 3%Late-arriving aircraft
Extreme weather accounts for 19% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 3.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 4,800 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 57%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,756 of the 4,800 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.37%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 541 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.
The return leg runs 92.3% on time across 1,080 flights, within half a point 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. 1,080 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PSP after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,080 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 91.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,076 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SLC to PSP questions
How often is SLC to PSP delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.2% of the 1,080 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is SLC to PSP compared with the rest of the country?
91.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 15 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SLC to PSP?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 96.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 88.0%, 8 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 February delays on SLC to PSP?
February is the weakest month at 79.8% on time, compared with 100.0% in June. Across the year that is 20 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 SLC — the return legseparate record
- Salt Lake City International (SLC) delay statistics
- SLC to DEN, a related route79.0%
- SFO to PSP, a related route73.9%
- SLC to PHX, a related route83.5%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record92.4%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.1%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SLC to PSP and PSP to SLC 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.