Route reliability record
SEA→TUS
Seattle to Tucson
- Flights
- 1,065
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,215 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,065 SEA to TUS flights, of which SkyWest Airlines flew 371 at 88.1% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to TUS: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.5% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.9%, against 82.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 52 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,059 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.47%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
SkyWest
88.1% on time across 371 flights
These figures cover 1,065 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to TUS
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 88.1% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 78.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 556 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlines | 371 | 88.1% | 62 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 138 | 83.8% | 73 min | 1.45% | B |
| Alaska Airlines | 556 | 78.5% | 38 min | 0.54% | 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 TUS
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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Seattle to Tucson
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 → TUSSeattle to Tucson | SkyWest Airlines | 88.1% | 88.1% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. SEA → TUSSeattle to Tucson | Alaska Airlines | 78.1% | 78.5% | 0.54% | 5pm–8pm, Wed | AS 648 10:19 |
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 18 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am517 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm207 flights70.4%
- 2pm–5pm6 flights—
- 5pm–8pm191 flights83.7%
- 8pm–5am144 flights76.8%
Scale runs 60% 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 70.4% on time against 88.5% 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 517 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SEA to TUS by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SEA to TUS, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 88.5% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 70.4%, a wide gap of 18.1 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am88.5%
- 11am–2pm70.4%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm83.7%
- 8pm–5am76.8%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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.
April is the best month on the calendar at 95.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 76.3%, a spread of 12 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 8,870 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,870 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 to one. The split is drawn from 8,870 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,369 of the 8,870 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.47%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% 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 1,215 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 85.9% on time across 1,065 flights, 3 points above 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,065 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in TUS after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,065 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 82.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,059 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to TUS questions
How often is SEA to TUS 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 17.5% of the 1,065 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to TUS?
SkyWest Airlines leads at 88.1% on time across 371 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 78.5%, 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 TUS?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 88.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 70.4%, 18 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 November delays on SEA to TUS?
November is the weakest month at 68.5% on time, compared with 95.6% 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
- TUS to SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- SkyWest Airlines on SEA to TUS88.1%
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to TUS83.8%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to TUS78.5%
- SEA to LAX, a related route82.0%
- PHX to TUS, a related route81.0%
- SEA to PHX, a related route78.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record88.1%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.8%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record78.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SEA to TUS and TUS 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.