Route reliability record
RDM→SEA
Redmond to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,939
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 228 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 1,939 RDM to SEA flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,415 at 86.6% on time.
Best time to fly RDM to SEA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.1% of the time and Saturday flights 90.1%, against 85.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,904 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.75%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.6% on time across 1,415 flights
These figures cover 1,939 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 RDM to SEA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,415 | 86.6% | 67 min | 1.77% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 524 | 82.1% | 54 min | 1.72% | B |
No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 86.6%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on RDM 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Redmond to Seattle
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. RDM → SEARedmond to Seattle | SkyWest Airlines | 85.1% | 86.6% | 1.77% | 11am–2pm, Sat | OO 3735 11:35 |
| 2. RDM → SEARedmond to Seattle | Alaska Airlines | 80.7% | 82.1% | 1.72% | 5am–8am, Sat | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 11 points, against 5 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am568 flights89.1%
- 8am–11am149 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm566 flights83.9%
- 2pm–5pm225 flights78.1%
- 5pm–8pm431 flights87.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.1% of the time, against 78.1% for the afternoon window. That is 11 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 568 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,939 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
August is the worst month at 80.4% on time, 9 points below November, the best at 89.1%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 83.2%. 7 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 52% of the 17,000 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.
- 52%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.1 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 17,480 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, 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 9,063 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.75% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.05%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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 228 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 83.9% on time across 1,938 flights, within 2 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 1,939 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: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid August if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, SkyWest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 11 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 1,904 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RDM to SEA questions
How often is RDM to SEA delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.6% of the 1,939 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on RDM to SEA?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.6% on time across 1,415 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 82.1%, a gap of 5 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RDM to SEA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 78.1%, 11 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 August delays on RDM to SEA?
August is the weakest month at 80.4% on time, compared with 89.1% in November. Across the year that is 9 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 RDM — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on RDM to SEA86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on RDM to SEA82.1%
- RDM to SFO, a related route66.7%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.4%
- RDM to PHX, a related route91.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record82.1%
- 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. RDM to SEA and SEA to RDM 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.