Route reliability record
MFR→SEA
Medford to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,321
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 352 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,321 MFR to SEA flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly MFR to SEA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.4%, against 89.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,303 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
89.4% on time across 1,321 flights
These figures cover 1,321 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MFR to SEA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,321 | 89.4% | 66 min | 1.21% | A |
Flight by flight
Flights on MFR to SEA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am366 flights96.4%
- 8am–11am13 flights—
- 11am–2pm463 flights83.7%
- 2pm–5pm29 flights—
- 5pm–8pm420 flights89.9%
- 8pm–5am30 flights90.0%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 83.7% on time against 96.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 463 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MFR to SEA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On MFR to SEA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 96.4% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 83.7%, a wide gap of 12.7 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am96.4%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm83.7%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm89.9%
- 8pm–5am90.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
July is the worst month at 84.4% on time, 15 points below September, the best at 98.9%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.4% on time and Monday the weakest at 85.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 9,100 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 31%Extreme weather
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 31% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 5.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 9,100 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,988 of the 9,100 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 352 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 86.2% on time across 1,320 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,321 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SEA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 98.9% on time and July 84.4%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,303 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MFR to SEA questions
How often is MFR to SEA delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 10.6% of the 1,321 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MFR to SEA compared with the rest of the country?
89.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 12 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MFR to SEA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 96.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 83.7%, 13 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 July delays on MFR to SEA?
July is the weakest month at 84.4% on time, compared with 98.9% in September. Across the year that is 15 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 MFR — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- MFR to SFO, a related route63.7%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.0%
- MFR to PHX, a related route84.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record89.4%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MFR to SEA and SEA to MFR are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.