Carrier route record

OOSEA→SNA

SkyWest Airlines · Seattle to Santa Ana

Flights: 405
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

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

SkyWest on SEA to SNA lands a B+, 5 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 35 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 405 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 2,608 at 86.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SEA to SNA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 404 completed flights

Avg delay

36 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.25%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.1%

Every carrier on SEA to SNA, 3,967 flights

These figures cover 405 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on SEA to SNA

SkyWest flew 405 of the 3,967 flights on SEA to SNA, about 10% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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: 3 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.

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

No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 86.3%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am66 flights86.4%
8am–11am—
11am–2pm121 flights72.7%
2pm–5pm66 flights76.9%
5pm–8pm152 flights90.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% 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 72.7% on time against 90.8% for 5pm–8pm. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 152 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SEA to SNA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025133 flights84.2%
Oct–Dec 202570 flights75.4%
Jan–Mar 202614 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026188 flights83.0%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.4% on time across 405 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on SEA to SNA held fairly steady: 84.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 75.4% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 71.4%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 75% of the 2,575 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
75%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
10%

The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 1,942 of the 2,575 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,575 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.25%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.0% 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 84.5% on time across 405 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 405 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 SkyWest on SEA to SNA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 405 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 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 404 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