Flight number record
AS 3
Alaska Airlines · Washington to Seattle
- Route
- DCA → SEA
- Departs
- 17:00
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 3, check with Alaska Airlines.
AS 3 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AS 3 runs 4 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 44 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
8.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AS 3 flies
AS 3 flies DCA to SEA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:00, used on 272 of 363 flights.
- Departs 17:00272 flights74.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:00 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AS 3 runs 5 points better at 72.9%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
AS 3 next to DCA to SEA
Every carrier on DCA to SEA combined arrived on time 73.4% of the time across 1,092 flights, so AS 3 is about level with it. Alaska flew 728 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 76.4% on time. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.7%, which this flight trails by 7 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS 3thin sample | 363 | 72.9% | 57 min | 0.28% | C+ |
| All Alaska Airlines on DCA–SEA | 728 | 76.4% | 50 min | 0.69% | B+ |
| All carriers on DCA–SEA | 1,092 | 73.4% | 66 min | 1.37% | C |
| Alaska Airlines, whole network | 309,844 | 79.7% | 52 min | 1.20% | B |
Across the year
AS 3 quarter by quarter
AS 3 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 61.4%, a swing of 35 points on roughly 73 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.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights96.7%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights68.1%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights61.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights69.5%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
By weekday, AS 3 did best on Saturday at 86.3% on time and worst on Sunday at 62.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 24 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AS 3 runs when it is late
AS 3 often beats the schedule: 120 of 358 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 97 late arrivals split 33 under half an hour, 33 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 31 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early120 flights33.5%
- Within 15 min141 flights39.4%
- 15–29 min late33 flights9.2%
- 30–59 min late33 flights9.2%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 358 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 86 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SEA.
The worst days
Worst days for AS 3
The latest arrival of the period was on 11 June 2026, 4 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as extreme weather. The five worst days are spread across June, July, April and March, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 11 June 2026 | 4 hours 35 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 18 July 2026 | 4 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 April 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 3 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why AS 3 runs late
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 5,564 reported delay minutes.
- 36%National Airspace System
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
Extreme weather accounts for 14% 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 quarterly figures above are the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 5,564 delay minutes reported on AS 3.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 routes
What a delay on this flight costs
8.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,329 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
Every one of the 363 flights under AS 3 in the data flew DCA to SEA. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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 AS 3
For a booking, read AS 3 as 72.9% on time with 0.28% cancelled over 363 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to SEA, every carrier and departure
- SEA to DCA, the return direction
- Alaska Airlines 1 on the same route79.9%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on-time record
- Every Alaska Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Connecting flights: how much buffer the data says you need
A flight number here means Alaska Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
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.