Flight number record
AS 7
Alaska Airlines · Washington to San Francisco
- Route
- DCA → SFO
- Departs
- 18:59
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 7, check with Alaska Airlines.
AS 7 draws a C. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AS 7 runs 11 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 113 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
13.8%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 13.8% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Schedule
When AS 7 flies
AS 7 flies DCA to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 18:59, used on 236 of 363 flights.
- Departs 18:59236 flights65.0%
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 18:59 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AS 7 runs 2 points worse at 66.0%. 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 7 next to DCA to SFO
Every carrier on DCA to SFO combined arrived on time 71.9% of the time across 1,090 flights, so AS 7 is 6 points behind it. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.7%, which this flight trails by 14 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS 7thin sample | 363 | 66.0% | 60 min | 1.10% | C |
| All Alaska Airlines on DCA–SFOthin sample | 363 | 66.0% | 60 min | 1.10% | C |
| All carriers on DCA–SFO | 1,090 | 71.9% | 65 min | 0.83% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlines, whole network | 309,844 | 79.7% | 52 min | 1.20% | B |
Across the year
AS 7 quarter by quarter
AS 7 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 53.3%, a swing of 30 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 flights83.3%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights73.6%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights70.5%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights56.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights53.3%
Scale runs 45% to 90%.
By weekday, AS 7 did best on Saturday at 80.0% on time and worst on Wednesday at 57.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AS 7 runs when it is late
AS 7 often beats the schedule: 101 of 356 completed flights, 28%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 121 late arrivals split 40 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 49 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early101 flights28.4%
- Within 15 min134 flights37.6%
- 15–29 min late40 flights11.2%
- 30–59 min late32 flights9.0%
- 1–2 hours late40 flights11.2%
- 2+ hours late9 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 122 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 22 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for AS 7
The latest arrival of the period was on 28 May 2026, 5 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 28 May 2026 | 5 hours 4 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 October 2025 | 4 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 October 2025 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 December 2025 | 3 hours 30 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why AS 7 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 7,255 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%National Airspace System
- 18%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,255 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 7,255 delay minutes reported on AS 7.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.83%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
13.8% 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 2,442 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 7 in the data flew DCA to SFO. 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 7
For a booking, AS 7 is a flight to put a long connection behind. 13.8% of its completed flights arrived an hour or more late, which a short layover will not absorb. If the onward flight is on a separate ticket, the risk sits with you.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to SFO, every carrier and departure
- SFO to DCA, the return direction
- United Airlines 369 on the same route87.8%
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.