Carrier route record
ASSEA→MSP
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Minneapolis
- Flights
- 953
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 35%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SEA to MSP lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 953 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 Alaska on SEA to MSP from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 940 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.5%
Every carrier on SEA to MSP, 2,689 flights
These figures cover 953 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
Alaska against every carrier on SEA to MSP
Alaska flew 953 of the 2,689 flights on SEA to MSP, about 35% of it. Its 80.0% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.5% to Alaska at 80.0%.
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 | 1,736 | 88.5% | 66 min | 0.81% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 953 | 80.0% | 44 min | 1.05% | B |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SEA to MSP
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 953 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am460 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm165 flights73.8%
- 2pm–5pm22 flights—
- 5pm–8pm306 flights78.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 90%. 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 73.8% on time against 82.5% for 8am–11am. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 460 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SEA to MSP through the year
July is the worst month at 62.0% on time, 32 points below January, the best at 94.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 123 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 85.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 76.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
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 8,196 reported delay minutes.
- 37%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 26%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 8,196 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 37 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 8,196 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 3,068 of the 8,196 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.31%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 1,399 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 runs 79.4% on time across 953 flights, within half a point 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. 953 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 MSP
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 953 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 80.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 940 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to MSP, every carrier
- Alaska on MSP to SEA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to MSP88.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Minneapolis-St Paul International (MSP) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.