Carrier route record
DLCVG→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Cincinnati to Seattle
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on CVG to SEA lands a B+, 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 362 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's CVG to SEA record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.83%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
77.0%
Every carrier on CVG to SEA, 793 flights
These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Delta against every carrier on CVG to SEA
Delta flew 362 of the 793 flights on CVG to SEA, about 46% of it. Its 83.8% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.8% to Alaska at 71.2%.
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 (this page)thin sample | 362 | 83.8% | 52 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 431 | 71.2% | 57 min | 1.86% | C |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on CVG to SEA
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Departure window
When Delta 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 362 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's CVG to SEA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 83.8% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on CVG to SEA through the year
December is the weak month at 46.7% on time, against 100.0% in September. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 76.5%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on CVG to SEA runs when it is late
Delta on CVG to SEA often beats the schedule: 115 of 359 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 29 of the 58 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 12 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early115 flights32.0%
- Within 15 min186 flights51.8%
- 15–29 min late29 flights8.1%
- 30–59 min late17 flights4.7%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 18 of 359 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on CVG to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 26 April 2026, 5 hours 56 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 26 April 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 January 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 16 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 21 March 2026 | 3 hours 9 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 July 2026 | 2 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
National Airspace System accounts for 48% of the 3,001 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%National Airspace System
- 48%Carrier
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,451 of the 3,001 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,001 reported delay minutes.
48% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,455 minutes out of 3,001, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.83%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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.
At 1,965 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.6% on time across 362 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 362 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 Delta on CVG to SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 362 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CVG to SEA, every carrier
- Delta on SEA to CVG, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on CVG to SEA71.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.