Carrier route record
ASSEA→RNO
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Reno
- Flights
- 791
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 88%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SEA to RNO lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.3%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That rests on 791 flights, with a median arrival 3 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SEA to RNO from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 782 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
79.6%
Every carrier on SEA to RNO, 904 flights
These figures cover 791 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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 RNO
Alaska flew 791 of the 904 flights on SEA to RNO, most of the route. Its 78.1% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 79.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.2% to Alaska at 78.1%. 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 | 113 | 90.2% | 68 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 791 | 78.1% | 45 min | 1.01% | B |
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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 791 flights.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am126 flights84.6%
- 11am–2pm265 flights75.3%
- 2pm–5pm30 flights—
- 5pm–8pm106 flights75.5%
- 8pm–5am248 flights78.4%
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 75.3% on time against 84.6% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 265 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SEA to RNO through the year
December is the weak month at 64.8% on time, against 90.0% in April. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 85 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.8%, a spread of 21 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SEA to RNO runs when it is late
The 171 late arrivals split 78 under half an hour, 56 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 37 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early194 flights24.8%
- Within 15 min417 flights53.3%
- 15–29 min late78 flights10.0%
- 30–59 min late56 flights7.2%
- 1–2 hours late26 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late11 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 782 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
61 of 212 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. 20 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SEA to RNO
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 December 2025, 3 hours 51 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 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 5 January 2026 | 3 hours 51 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 October 2025 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 November 2025 | 2 hours 32 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 30 July 2026 | 2 hours 27 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 7,738 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 7,738 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 7,738 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,163 of the 7,738 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.13%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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.
The 564 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 runs 78.0% on time across 793 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. 791 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 RNO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 791 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 78.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 782 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to RNO, every carrier
- Alaska on RNO to SEA, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on SEA to RNO90.2%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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.