Route reliability record
SEA→PHL
Seattle to Philadelphia
- Flights
- 1,326
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,379 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five 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 1,326 SEA to PHL flights, of which American Airlines flew 619 at 83.9% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to PHL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.5%, against 81.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,298 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.66%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
83.9% on time across 619 flights
These figures cover 1,326 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 PHL
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 51 | 84.3% | 41 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 619 | 83.9% | 83 min | 2.10% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 656 | 79.5% | 46 min | 1.37% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 83.9%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA to PHL
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Seattle to Philadelphia
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SEA → PHLSeattle to Philadelphia | American Airlines | 82.1% | 83.9% | 2.10% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
| 2. SEA → PHLSeattle to Philadelphia | Alaska Airlines | 78.4% | 79.5% | 1.37% | 8pm–5am, Tue | AS 442 09:59 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 1,326 flights.
- 5am–8am69 flights86.4%
- 8am–11am430 flights76.9%
- 11am–2pm169 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am658 flights83.9%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 76.9% for the morning window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 658 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
July is the worst month at 67.0% on time, 27 points below April, the best at 93.9%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.2%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 15,000 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 13%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 2.0 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,521 reported delay minutes.
42% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations sit at 1.66% against a national 1.81%, 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 8.1% 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.
At 2,379 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 69.5% on time across 1,327 flights, 12 points below 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 12 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,326 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 PHL 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. April runs 93.9% on time and July 67.0%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,298 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to PHL questions
How often is SEA to PHL delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.3% of the 1,326 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to PHL?
American Airlines leads at 83.9% on time across 619 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 79.5%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SEA to PHL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 76.9%, 10 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 July delays on SEA to PHL?
July is the weakest month at 67.0% on time, compared with 93.9% in April. Across the year that is 27 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
- PHL to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Philadelphia International (PHL) delay statistics
- American Airlines on SEA to PHL83.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to PHL79.5%
- SEA to LAX, a related route83.4%
- ATL to PHL, a related route74.9%
- SEA to PHX, a related route79.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record84.3%
- American Airlines on-time record83.9%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record79.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SEA to PHL and PHL 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.