Carrier route record
ASDFW→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Dallas-Fort Worth to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,756
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 34%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on DFW to SEA sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,756 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 712 at 78.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on DFW to SEA runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 49 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,728 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.48%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
69.5%
Every carrier on DFW to SEA, 5,232 flights
These figures cover 1,756 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on DFW to SEA
Alaska flew 1,756 of the 5,232 flights on DFW to SEA, about 34% of it. Its 72.7% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 69.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 78.9% to American at 65.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 78.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 65.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,736 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 712 | 78.9% | 88 min | 1.69% | B |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,756 | 72.7% | 57 min | 1.48% | C |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 28 | 67.9% | 43 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 2,736 | 65.0% | 64 min | 2.67% | C |
The spread between Delta and American is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on DFW to SEA
Departure window
When Alaska runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 27 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am237 flights78.8%
- 8am–11am448 flights75.2%
- 11am–2pm166 flights80.4%
- 2pm–5pm350 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm343 flights67.6%
- 8pm–5am212 flights53.1%
Scale runs 45% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 53.1% on time, against 80.4% for the 11am–2pm 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 448 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on DFW to SEA through the year
July is the worst month at 53.1% on time, 36 points below April, the best at 88.8%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 181 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 68.2%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
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 27,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 21%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
39% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 26,825 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.48% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.0% 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 1,660 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 78.9% on time across 1,755 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,756 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 DFW to SEA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 88.8% on time and July 53.1%, a swing of 36 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,728 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- DFW to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to DFW, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on DFW to SEA78.9%
- American Airlines on DFW to SEA65.0%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.