Route reliability record
BZN→SEA
Bozeman to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,565
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 543 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,565 BZN to SEA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 937 at 84.2% on time.
Best time to fly BZN to SEA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.3%, against 84.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 68 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,552 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
84.2% on time across 937 flights
These figures cover 1,565 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 BZN to SEA
The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 937 | 84.2% | 64 min | 0.21% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 628 | 83.9% | 65 min | 1.11% | B |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 84.2%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on BZN to SEA
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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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Bozeman to Seattle
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. BZN → SEABozeman to Seattle | SkyWest Airlines | 84.0% | 84.2% | 0.21% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 4092 08:25 |
| 2. BZN → SEABozeman to Seattle | Alaska Airlines | 83.0% | 83.9% | 1.11% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 31 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am469 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am145 flights93.0%
- 11am–2pm121 flights84.2%
- 2pm–5pm613 flights81.1%
- 5pm–8pm159 flights70.9%
- 8pm–5am58 flights62.1%
Scale runs 55% to 100%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 62.1% on time, against 93.0% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 613 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BZN to SEA 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 BZN to SEA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.0% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 62.1%, a wide gap of 30.9 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am92.5%
- 8–11am93.0%
- 11am–2pm84.2%
- 2–5pm81.1%
- 5–8pm70.9%
- 8pm–5am62.1%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
August is the worst month at 76.1% on time, 14 points below January, the best at 90.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 161 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 16,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 11%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 11% 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 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 15,871 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,417 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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
5.2% 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.
The 543 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 81.6% on time across 1,566 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,565 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SEA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. January runs 90.4% on time and August 76.1%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,552 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BZN to SEA questions
How often is BZN to SEA delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.9% of the 1,565 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on BZN to SEA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 84.2% on time across 937 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 83.9%, a gap of half a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BZN to SEA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.0% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 62.1%, 31 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 August delays on BZN to SEA?
August is the weakest month at 76.1% on time, compared with 90.4% in January. Across the year that is 14 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
- SEA to BZN — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on BZN to SEA84.2%
- Alaska Airlines on BZN to SEA83.9%
- BZN to DEN, a related route77.5%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.0%
- BZN to ORD, a related route73.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.2%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record83.9%
- Flying to ski country: which routes into the mountains run on time
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BZN to SEA and SEA to BZN 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.