Flight number record

AS 8

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Washington

Route: SFO → DCA
Departs: 09:45
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 8, check with Alaska Airlines.

AS 8 lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.

On time

77.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights

Avg delay

55 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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.

Schedule

When AS 8 flies

AS 8 flies SFO to DCA without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 09:45, used on 96 of 364 flights, with 09:40 (58 flights) and 09:34 (45 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 09:4596 flights26.4%
Departs 09:4058 flights15.9%
Departs 09:3445 flights12.4%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 09:45 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AS 8 runs 7 points worse at 77.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AS 8 next to SFO to DCA

Every carrier on SFO to DCA combined arrived on time 78.9% of the time across 1,093 flights, so AS 8 is about level with it. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.1%, which this flight trails by 2 points.

AS 8 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AS 8thin sample	364	77.6%	55 min	1.10%	B
All Alaska Airlines on SFO–DCAthin sample	364	77.6%	55 min	1.10%	B
All carriers on SFO–DCA	1,093	78.9%	58 min	1.01%	B
Alaska Airlines, whole network	293,372	79.1%	52 min	1.28%	B

Across the year

AS 8 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AS 8 held fairly steady: 71.9% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 79.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 78.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights71.9%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights80.2%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights79.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights78.9%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AS 8 did best on Saturday at 90.2% on time and worst on Monday at 68.0%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AS 8 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 4,396 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
34%
Carrier
23%
Security
1%

41% 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 4,396 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 4,396 delay minutes reported on AS 8.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.82%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says 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 2,442 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 364 flights under AS 8 in the data flew SFO to DCA. 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. 364 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 8

For a booking, read AS 8 as 77.6% on time with 1.10% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures