Carrier route record

OOSNA→SEA

SkyWest Airlines · Santa Ana to Seattle

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 SNA to SEA earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 405 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 2,606 at 87.5% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's SNA to SEA record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 401 completed flights

Avg delay

40 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.25%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.7%

Every carrier on SNA to SEA, 3,965 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 SNA to SEA

SkyWest flew 405 of the 3,965 flights on SNA to SEA, about 10% of it. Its 84.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 87.5% to Delta at 81.2%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 87.5% of the time; Delta Air Lines manages 81.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 954 flights means less than a ten-point one.

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

Alaska leads Delta by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

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 17 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am130 flights89.8%
8am–11am51 flights92.2%
11am–2pm37 flights86.5%
2pm–5pm65 flights75.4%
5pm–8pm122 flights80.0%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.2% of the time, against 75.4% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 130 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SNA to SEA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025133 flights85.6%
Oct–Dec 202571 flights80.9%
Jan–Mar 202614 flights—
Apr–Jun 2026187 flights84.0%

Scale runs 70% 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 84.5% on time across 405 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on SNA to SEA held fairly steady: 85.6% in Jul–Sep 2025, 80.9% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 84.0% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.0%. 13 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 76% of the 2,469 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
76%
National Airspace System
12%
Extreme weather
12%

Extreme weather accounts for 12% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 1.9 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 2,469 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, 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 1,879 of the 2,469 delay minutes reported here.

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 82.4% 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 SNA to SEA

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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 401 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