Carrier route record
ASFAI→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Fairbanks to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,838
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 79%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on FAI to SEA lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,838 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's FAI to SEA record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,820 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.7%
Every carrier on FAI to SEA, 2,320 flights
These figures cover 1,838 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
Alaska against every carrier on FAI to SEA
Alaska flew 1,838 of the 2,320 flights on FAI to SEA, most of the route. Its 83.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 83.8% to Delta at 78.3%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,838 | 83.8% | 50 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 482 | 78.3% | 104 min | 2.70% | B |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on FAI to SEA
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 1,838 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights85.0%
- 8am–11am229 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm364 flights86.5%
- 2pm–5pm363 flights77.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am518 flights85.6%
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 77.2%. 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 518 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on FAI to SEA through the year
December is the weak month at 71.3% on time, against 93.6% in May. 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 185 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.6% on time and Monday the weakest at 80.3%. 6 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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 36%Late-arriving aircraft
- 35%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
36% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 14,688 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 5,092 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.6% 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 77.3% on time across 1,839 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,838 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 FAI to SEA
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 93.6% on time and December 71.3%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,820 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- FAI to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to FAI, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on FAI to SEA78.3%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.