Route reliability record
SEA→RDM
Seattle to Redmond
- Flights
- 1,938
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 228 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,938 SEA to RDM flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 1,415 at 86.6% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to RDM: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.1% of the time and Saturday flights 86.5%, against 83.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,902 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
SkyWest
86.6% on time across 1,415 flights
These figures cover 1,938 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 RDM
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 86.6% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 76.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 523 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,415 | 86.6% | 52 min | 1.70% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 523 | 76.5% | 43 min | 1.53% | B |
SkyWest leads Alaska by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA to RDM
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 Redmond
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 → RDMSeattle to Redmond | SkyWest Airlines | 85.1% | 86.6% | 1.70% | 8am–11am, Sat | OO 3735 09:25 |
| 2. SEA → RDMSeattle to Redmond | Alaska Airlines | 75.3% | 76.5% | 1.53% | 8pm–5am, Tue | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am396 flights90.1%
- 11am–2pm301 flights78.7%
- 2pm–5pm201 flights88.3%
- 5pm–8pm355 flights80.5%
- 8pm–5am685 flights83.1%
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 90.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 685 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 71.0% on time, 18 points below October, the best at 89.4%. 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. September was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.9%. 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 48% of the 15,000 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.
- 48%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 17% 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 2.7 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 14,947 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, 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 7,146 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.21%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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 228 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 85.4% on time across 1,939 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,938 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 RDM 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. October runs 89.4% on time and July 71.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,902 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to RDM questions
How often is SEA to RDM delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.1% of the 1,938 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to RDM?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 86.6% on time across 1,415 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 76.5%, a gap of 10 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 RDM?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.1% 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 July delays on SEA to RDM?
July is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 89.4% in October. Across the year that is 18 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
- RDM to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SEA to RDM86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to RDM76.5%
- SEA to LAX, a related route83.4%
- SFO to RDM, a related route77.7%
- SEA to PHX, a related route79.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record76.5%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SEA to RDM and RDM 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.