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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

ASGEGSEA

Alaska Airlines · Spokane to Seattle

Flights
1,820
Period
July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route
35%
Carriers
3
BGRADE

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on GEG to SEA lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,820 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on GEG to SEA from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

Key figures

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,800 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.10%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.9%

Every carrier on GEG to SEA, 5,183 flights

These figures cover 1,820 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 GEG to SEA

Alaska flew 1,820 of the 5,183 flights on GEG to SEA, about 35% of it. Its 80.6% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 93.8% to Alaska at 80.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on GEG to SEA
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Delta Air Linesthin sample34393.8%145 min1.46%A
SkyWest Airlines3,02088.2%60 min0.99%A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)1,82080.6%43 min1.10%B

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 19 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

  • 5am–8am646 flights90.0%
  • 8am–11am245 flights75.5%
  • 11am–2pm367 flights78.6%
  • 2pm–5pm84 flights86.6%
  • 5pm–8pm475 flights71.2%
  • 8pm–5am3 flights

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 71.2% for the evening window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 646 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on GEG to SEA through the year

On-time rate by calendar month82J92F84M88A90M80J66J68A75S81O86N76D
Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, July worst

July is the worst month at 65.5% on time, 26 points below February, the best at 91.9%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 192 flights.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 84.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.1%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

On-time rate by day of the week81.3Mon84.0Tue81.4Wed74.1Thu76.0Fri83.4Sat84.3Sun
Monday: 81.3 percent on time. Tuesday: 84.0 percent on time. Wednesday: 81.4 percent on time. Thursday: 74.1 percent on time. Friday: 76.0 percent on time. Saturday: 83.4 percent on time. Sunday: 84.3 percent on time

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 15,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

  • Late-arriving aircraft
    47%
  • National Airspace System
    26%
  • Carrier
    24%
  • Extreme weather
    2%
  • Security
    0%

47% 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 20 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 15,042 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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 224 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.6% on time across 1,820 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 1,820 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 GEG to SEA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 91.9% on time and July 65.5%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,800 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.