Carrier route record
ASDCA→SFO
Alaska Airlines · Washington to San Francisco
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on DCA to SFO 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 Alaska on DCA to SFO 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%
Whole route
71.9%
Every carrier on DCA to SFO, 1,090 flights
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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on DCA to SFO
Alaska flew 363 of the 1,090 flights on DCA to SFO, about 33% of it. Its 66.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 71.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 74.8% to Alaska at 66.0%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 727 | 74.8% | 68 min | 0.69% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample | 363 | 66.0% | 60 min | 1.10% | C |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on DCA to SFO
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 363 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's DCA to SFO record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 66.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Alaska on DCA to SFO through the year
- 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%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 66.0% on time across 363 flights.
Alaska on DCA to SFO 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.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 57.7%, a spread of 22 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on DCA to SFO runs when it is late
Alaska on DCA to SFO 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 Alaska on DCA to SFO
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 Alaska runs late on this route
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 reported delay minutes.
36% 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 2,601 minutes out of 7,255, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.83%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.3% on time across 363 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
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 Alaska on DCA to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 363 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 66.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DCA to SFO, every carrier
- Alaska on SFO to DCA, the return leg
- United Airlines on DCA to SFO74.8%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.