Carrier route record
ASANC→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Anchorage to Seattle
- Flights
- 4,926
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 74%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on ANC to SEA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 4,926 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's ANC to SEA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 81 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,861 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.5%
Every carrier on ANC to SEA, 6,681 flights
These figures cover 4,926 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.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on ANC to SEA
Alaska flew 4,926 of the 6,681 flights on ANC to SEA, most of the route. Its 85.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.1% to Hawaiian at 27.9%. One 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,630 | 89.1% | 105 min | 0.67% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 4,926 | 85.7% | 52 min | 1.24% | A |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 125 | 27.9% | 74 min | 2.40% | F |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on ANC to SEA
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
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 4,926 flights.
- 5am–8am968 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am829 flights89.4%
- 11am–2pm570 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm750 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm539 flights79.8%
- 8pm–5am1,270 flights88.9%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.4% of the time, against 79.7% for the afternoon window. That is 10 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 1,270 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on ANC to SEA through the year
January is the weak month at 78.2% on time, against 94.0% in April. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 515 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 3 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 46% of the 36,000 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.
- 46%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, 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 17,000 of the 36,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 36,294 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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.
The 1,448 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.8% on time across 4,928 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 4,926 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
What to do with this
Booking Alaska on ANC to SEA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.0% on time and January 78.2%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 4,861 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- ANC to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to ANC, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on ANC to SEA89.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines on ANC to SEA27.9%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.