Carrier route record

ASSNA→SEA

Alaska Airlines · Santa Ana to Seattle

Flights: 2,606
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 SNA to SEA earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 2,606 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 405 at 84.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SNA to SEA record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 99 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,570 completed flights

Avg delay

50 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.34%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.7%

Every carrier on SNA to SEA, 3,965 flights

These figures cover 2,606 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 SNA to SEA

Alaska flew 2,606 of the 3,965 flights on SNA to SEA, most of the route. Its 87.5% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.5% to Delta at 81.2%.

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 SNA to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)	2,606	87.5%	50 min	1.34%	A
SkyWest Airlines	405	84.5%	40 min	0.25%	B+
Delta Air Lines	954	81.2%	73 min	1.26%	B

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 84.5%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Flight by flight

Alaska flight numbers on SNA to SEA

AS 132506:4594.3% · 340 flights

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am355 flights93.7%
8am–11am735 flights90.8%
11am–2pm351 flights87.4%
2pm–5pm386 flights85.1%
5pm–8pm547 flights78.0%
8pm–5am232 flights94.1%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 94.1% on time across 232 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 735 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SNA to SEA through the year

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

August is the worst month at 76.7% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 94.9%. 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 85.5%. 5 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 16,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
50%
Carrier
25%
National Airspace System
24%
Extreme weather
1%

50% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 50 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 16,028 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.6% 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 86.3% on time across 2,608 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 2,606 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 SNA to SEA

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.9% on time and August 76.7%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 2,570 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