Route reliability record
MFR→SEA
Medford to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,244
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,244 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 95.9%, against 91.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 134 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,227 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
91.0% on time across 1,244 flights
These figures cover 1,244 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
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 | 1,244 | 91.0% | 78 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.
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 1,244 flights.
- 5am–8am366 flights96.4%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm401 flights86.8%
- 2pm–5pm29 flights—
- 5pm–8pm418 flights90.8%
- 8pm–5am30 flights90.0%
Scale runs 80% 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 86.8% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 418 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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.
January is the weak month at 85.3% on time, against 98.9% in September. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 131 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 87.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 8,599 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.
- 53%Carrier
- 34%Extreme weather
- 7%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 34% 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 5.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 8,599 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 4,562 of the 8,599 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.21% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.16%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 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 runs 88.2% on time across 1,243 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,244 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 January 85.3%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,227 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 twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.0% of the 1,244 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MFR to SEA compared with the rest of the country?
91.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 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 86.8%, 10 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 January delays on MFR to SEA?
January is the weakest month at 85.3% on time, compared with 98.9% in September. Across the year that is 14 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 route70.3%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.4%
- MFR to PHX, a related route86.8%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record91.0%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.