Carrier route record
ASSEA→OAK
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Oakland
- Flights
- 785
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 41%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SEA to OAK lands a B, about a point 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 785 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SEA to OAK from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 775 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.7%
Every carrier on SEA to OAK, 1,914 flights
These figures cover 785 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on SEA to OAK
Alaska flew 785 of the 1,914 flights on SEA to OAK, about 41% of it. Its 78.3% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 92.3% to Southwest at 69.8%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 Airlinesthin sample | 41 | 92.3% | 72 min | 4.88% | A− |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 785 | 78.3% | 49 min | 1.27% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,088 | 69.8% | 52 min | 0.28% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SEA to OAK
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am81 flights92.5%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm220 flights72.6%
- 2pm–5pm119 flights87.3%
- 5pm–8pm90 flights73.0%
- 8pm–5am247 flights77.2%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 72.6% on time against 92.5% for 5am–8am. 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 247 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SEA to OAK through the year
December is the weak month at 67.8% on time, against 92.2% in February. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 107 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 81.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SEA to OAK runs when it is late
The 168 late arrivals split 66 under half an hour, 60 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 42 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early192 flights24.8%
- Within 15 min415 flights53.5%
- 15–29 min late66 flights8.5%
- 30–59 min late60 flights7.7%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights3.6%
- 2+ hours late14 flights1.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 775 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
36 of 189 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. Only 15 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SEA to OAK
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 December 2025, 3 hours 59 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 December 2025 | 3 hours 59 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 March 2026 | 3 hours 39 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 June 2026 | 3 hours 10 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 December 2025 | 2 hours 58 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 July 2026 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 8,141 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,141 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 8,141 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,768 of the 8,141 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 672 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.9% on time across 785 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 785 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 OAK
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 785 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 78.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 775 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to OAK, every carrier
- Alaska on OAK to SEA, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SEA to OAK69.8%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) 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.