Carrier route record
DLSEA→ANC
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Anchorage
- Flights
- 1,630
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 24%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SEA to ANC lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,630 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Delta on SEA to ANC from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,617 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.2%
Every carrier on SEA to ANC, 6,681 flights
These figures cover 1,630 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Delta against every carrier on SEA to ANC
Delta flew 1,630 of the 6,681 flights on SEA to ANC, about 24% of it. Its 77.9% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.9% to Hawaiian at 53.7%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,630 | 77.9% | 61 min | 0.61% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 4,928 | 74.8% | 47 min | 1.12% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 123 | 53.7% | 59 min | 1.63% | F |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SEA to ANC
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 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–8am203 flights91.6%
- 8am–11am340 flights79.8%
- 11am–2pm345 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights69.6%
- 5pm–8pm266 flights71.5%
- 8pm–5am429 flights75.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.6% of the time, against 69.6% for the afternoon window. That is 22 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 429 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SEA to ANC through the year
December is the weak month at 53.4% on time, against 87.3% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 171 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.9% on time and Monday the weakest at 73.8%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 22,000 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
- 15%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 13,000 of the 22,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 21,813 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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
6.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,448 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.1% on time across 1,630 flights, 11 points above 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 11 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,630 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 Delta on SEA to ANC
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 87.3% on time and December 53.4%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,617 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to ANC, every carrier
- Delta on ANC to SEA, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to ANC74.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SEA to ANC53.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- 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
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.