Route reliability record
SEA→MFR
Seattle to Medford
- Flights
- 1,320
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 352 mi
- Carriers
- 1
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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,320 SEA to MFR flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly SEA to MFR: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.7%, against 86.2% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,301 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.2% on time across 1,320 flights
These figures cover 1,320 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to MFR
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 | 1,320 | 86.2% | 62 min | 0.98% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA to MFR
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.
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
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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am232 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm272 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm420 flights88.5%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights89.2%
- 8pm–5am359 flights89.3%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.7% on time against 89.3% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 420 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SEA to MFR by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SEA to MFR, the best departure window is 8pm–5am at 89.3% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 78.7%, a wide gap of 10.6 points. All US flights leaving 8pm–5am ran 70.1%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am85.3%
- 11am–2pm78.7%
- 2–5pm88.5%
- 5–8pm89.2%
- 8pm–5am89.3%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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.
August is the worst month at 77.2% on time, 20 points below September, the best at 96.7%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 137 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 36%Extreme weather
- 14%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 36% 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 5.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 11,098 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,424 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.45%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually 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.
At 352 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 8pm–5am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 89.4% on time across 1,321 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,320 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 MFR 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. September runs 96.7% on time and August 77.2%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,301 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to MFR questions
How often is SEA to MFR 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 13.8% of the 1,320 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is SEA to MFR compared with the rest of the country?
86.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SEA to MFR?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 89.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 78.7%, 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 SEA to MFR?
August is the weakest month at 77.2% on time, compared with 96.7% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- MFR to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SEA to LAX, a related route82.0%
- SFO to MFR, a related route78.0%
- SEA to PHX, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SEA to MFR and MFR to SEA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SEA to MFR’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.