Carrier route record

OOSEA→TUS

SkyWest Airlines · Seattle to Tucson

Flights: 371
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 35%
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 TUS 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 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 371 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SEA to TUS record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

83.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 371 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.8%

Every carrier on SEA to TUS, 1,065 flights

These figures cover 371 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

SkyWest against every carrier on SEA to TUS

SkyWest flew 371 of the 1,065 flights on SEA to TUS, about 35% of it. Its 83.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 83.8% to Alaska at 80.5%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to TUS
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	138	83.8%	73 min	1.45%	B
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	371	83.0%	52 min	0.00%	B+
Alaska Airlines	556	80.5%	37 min	0.54%	B+

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 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am227 flights92.1%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm144 flights68.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.1% of the time, against 68.8% for the evening window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 227 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SEA to TUS through the year

Jul–Sep 2025184 flights78.3%
Oct–Dec 202583 flights89.2%
Apr–Jun 2026104 flights86.5%

Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 83.0% on time across 371 flights.

SkyWest on SEA to TUS did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 89.2% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2025 at 78.3%, a swing of 11 points on roughly 124 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 74.1%. 14 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 43% of the 3,293 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
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
37%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
10%

37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 3,293 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 3,293 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 1,400 of the 3,293 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 4.0% 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 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. 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.3% on time across 371 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 371 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 TUS

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 371 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 371 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