Carrier route record

OOPDX→SEA

SkyWest Airlines · Portland to Seattle

Flights: 3,501
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 71%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on PDX to SEA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 3,501 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PDX to SEA record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,482 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.54%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.8%

Every carrier on PDX to SEA, 4,938 flights

These figures cover 3,501 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PDX to SEA

SkyWest flew 3,501 of the 4,938 flights on PDX to SEA, most of the route. Its 85.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 87.8% to Alaska at 82.6%. 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 PDX to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	312	87.8%	61 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	3,501	85.2%	59 min	0.54%	A+
Alaska Airlines	1,125	82.6%	42 min	1.16%	B

Flight by flight

SkyWest flight numbers on PDX to SEA

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 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–8am441 flights94.6%
8am–11am742 flights82.4%
11am–2pm593 flights88.8%
2pm–5pm737 flights84.2%
5pm–8pm690 flights80.8%
8pm–5am298 flights84.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.6% of the time, against 80.8% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 742 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PDX to SEA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.February best, July worst

July is the worst month at 74.9% on time, 18 points below February, the best at 93.1%. 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. October was the busiest month here, with 356 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.9%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 47% of the 30,000 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.

Carrier
47%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
15%
Security
0%

Extreme weather accounts for 15% 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 2.4 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 30,313 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 47%, 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 14,000 of the 30,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, 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 4.2% 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 129 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 86.1% on time across 3,343 flights, within about a point 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 3,501 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 SkyWest on PDX to SEA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 93.1% on time and July 74.9%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,482 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

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.

Key figures