Route reliability record
FAI→SEA
Fairbanks to Seattle
- Flights
- 2,320
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,533 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,320 flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 1,838 at 83.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,289 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.25%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
83.8% on time across 1,838 flights
These figures cover 2,320 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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
Which airline is most reliable on FAI to SEA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,838 | 83.8% | 50 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 482 | 78.3% | 104 min | 2.70% | B |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 83.8%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 2,320 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am229 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm364 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm484 flights78.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am879 flights82.1%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 78.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 879 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
December is the weak month at 67.0% on time, against 92.7% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 247 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 85.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.1%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 25,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
38% 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 25,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 25,256 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 10,000 of the 25,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.25% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.09%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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.
At 1,533 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 77.8% on time across 2,321 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,320 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.7% on time and December 67.0%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,289 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAI to SEA questions
How often is FAI to SEA delayed?
About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.3% of the 2,320 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on FAI to SEA?
Alaska Airlines leads at 83.8% on time across 1,838 flights. Delta Air Lines is at the other end on 78.3%, a gap of 6 points. 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 FAI to SEA?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 78.4%, 8 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 December delays on FAI to SEA?
December is the weakest month at 67.0% on time, compared with 92.7% in April. Across the year that is 26 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 FAI — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on-time record83.8%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record78.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. FAI to SEA and SEA to FAI are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.