Carrier route record
ASSEA→FAT
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Fresno
- Flights
- 417
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 47%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SEA to FAT lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 417 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SEA to FAT from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 413 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.72%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
82.3%
Every carrier on SEA to FAT, 882 flights
These figures cover 417 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Alaska against every carrier on SEA to FAT
Alaska flew 417 of the 882 flights on SEA to FAT, about 47% of it. Its 80.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 83.5% to Alaska at 80.9%.
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 | 465 | 83.5% | 61 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 417 | 80.9% | 49 min | 0.72% | B+ |
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Alaska 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 417 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am78 flights83.1%
- 11am–2pm223 flights82.7%
- 2pm–5pm47 flights78.7%
- 5pm–8pm69 flights73.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.1% of the time, against 73.9% for the evening window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 223 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SEA to FAT through the year
- Jul–Sep 202517 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights88.6%
- Jan–Mar 202680 flights82.3%
- Apr–Jun 2026134 flights80.5%
- Jul–Sep 202696 flights72.9%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 80.9% on time across 417 flights.
Alaska on SEA to FAT did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 88.6% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 72.9%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 104 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Monday the weakest at 76.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SEA to FAT runs when it is late
Alaska on SEA to FAT often beats the schedule: 109 of 413 completed flights, 26%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 79 late arrivals split 29 under half an hour, 31 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 19 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early109 flights26.4%
- Within 15 min225 flights54.5%
- 15–29 min late29 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late31 flights7.5%
- 1–2 hours late14 flights3.4%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.2%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 413 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
29 of 97 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 30% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SEA to FAT
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 November 2025, 3 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 November 2025 | 3 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 May 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 August 2026 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 February 2026 | 2 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 2 February 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 3,845 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,845 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 30 to one. The split is drawn from 3,845 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,748 of the 3,845 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.72%, below the national 1.89% 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 4.6% 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.
The 748 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.
The return leg runs 82.8% on time across 417 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 417 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 Alaska on SEA to FAT
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 417 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 80.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 413 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to FAT, every carrier
- Alaska on FAT to SEA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SEA to FAT83.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.