Carrier route record
DLSEA→CVG
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Cincinnati
- Flights
- 362
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 46%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SEA to CVG 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 362 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's SEA to CVG record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 123 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 357 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
86.2%
Every carrier on SEA to CVG, 793 flights
These figures cover 362 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
Delta against every carrier on SEA to CVG
Delta flew 362 of the 793 flights on SEA to CVG, about 46% of it. Its 89.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.6% to Alaska at 83.2%.
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)thin sample | 362 | 89.6% | 59 min | 1.10% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 431 | 83.2% | 40 min | 1.16% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SEA to CVG
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
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 362 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's SEA to CVG record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on SEA to CVG through the year
January is the weak month at 76.7% on time, against 96.7% in August. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 95.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 86.0%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SEA to CVG runs when it is late
Delta on SEA to CVG often beats the schedule: 172 of 357 completed flights, 48%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 37 late arrivals split 17 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 13 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early172 flights48.2%
- Within 15 min148 flights41.5%
- 15–29 min late17 flights4.8%
- 30–59 min late7 flights2.0%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights1.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 357 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
8 of 36 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SEA to CVG
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 November 2025, 3 hours 32 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 November 2025 | 3 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 26 April 2026 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 February 2026 | 2 hours 47 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 January 2026 | 2 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 12 January 2026 | 1 hour 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 56% of the 2,169 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 56%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 56%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,215 of the 2,169 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,169 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.28%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% 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 1,965 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.8% on time across 362 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 362 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on SEA to CVG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 362 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 89.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 357 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to CVG, every carrier
- Delta on CVG to SEA, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to CVG83.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.