Route reliability record
SEA→KTN
Seattle to Ketchikan
- Flights
- 1,303
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 680 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four 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 1,303 SEA to KTN flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly SEA to KTN: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.6% of the time and Saturday flights 79.8%, against 76.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,278 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
76.9% on time across 1,303 flights
These figures cover 1,303 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to KTN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,303 | 76.9% | 57 min | 0.23% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA to KTN
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.
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 18 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–8am361 flights85.6%
- 8am–11am117 flights69.8%
- 11am–2pm28 flights—
- 2pm–5pm435 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm362 flights81.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 85.6% of the time, against 67.5% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 435 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 57.5% on time, against 85.6% in May. 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 79.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.9%. 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 61% 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.
- 61%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 61%, 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 10,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,921 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.23%, 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 actually costs
7.3% 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 680 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 82.6% on time across 1,304 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,303 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 KTN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 85.6% on time and December 57.5%, a swing of 28 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,278 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to KTN questions
How often is SEA to KTN delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 23.1% of the 1,303 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SEA to KTN compared with the rest of the country?
76.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SEA to KTN?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 85.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.5%, 18 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 December delays on SEA to KTN?
December is the weakest month at 57.5% on time, compared with 85.6% in May. Across the year that is 28 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
- KTN to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SEA to LAX, a related route83.4%
- SEA to PHX, a related route79.2%
- SEA to SFO, a related route65.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record76.9%
- 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. SEA to KTN and KTN to SEA 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.