Carrier route record

ASSEA→SNA

Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Santa Ana

Flights: 2,608
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 66%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on SEA to SNA earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 2,608 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 954 at 83.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SEA to SNA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,574 completed flights

Avg delay

39 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.15%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.1%

Every carrier on SEA to SNA, 3,967 flights

These figures cover 2,608 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

Alaska against every carrier on SEA to SNA

Alaska flew 2,608 of the 3,967 flights on SEA to SNA, most of the route. Its 86.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 86.3% to SkyWest at 82.4%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: half a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to SNA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)	2,608	86.3%	39 min	1.15%	A
Delta Air Lines	954	83.0%	77 min	0.94%	B+
SkyWest Airlines	405	82.4%	36 min	0.25%	B+

No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 83.0%, half a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

Alaska flight numbers on SEA to SNA

AS 77314:1086.3% · 316 flights

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 2,608 flights.

5am–8am359 flights92.1%
8am–11am373 flights86.2%
11am–2pm483 flights83.7%
2pm–5pm490 flights83.2%
5pm–8pm903 flights87.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 83.2% for the afternoon window. That is 9 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 903 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SEA to SNA through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.May best, August worst

August is the worst month at 78.2% on time, 19 points below May, the best at 96.7%. 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 246 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.7%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 48% of the 14,000 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.

Carrier
48%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
22%
Extreme weather
2%

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 6,601 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 13,710 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.1% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.15% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% 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 978 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 87.5% on time across 2,606 flights, within about a point 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 2,608 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.

What to do with this

Booking Alaska on SEA to SNA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 96.7% on time and August 78.2%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,574 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures