Carrier route record
ASTUS→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Tucson to Seattle
- Flights
- 556
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 52%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on TUS to SEA earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 556 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's TUS to SEA record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 551 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.90%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
87.0%
Every carrier on TUS to SEA, 1,065 flights
These figures cover 556 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 TUS to SEA
Alaska flew 556 of the 1,065 flights on TUS to SEA, most of the route. Its 86.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.0% to Alaska at 86.2%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Linesthin sample | 138 | 89.0% | 152 min | 1.45% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 371 | 87.3% | 65 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 556 | 86.2% | 44 min | 0.90% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on TUS to SEA
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 19 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–8am193 flights92.6%
- 8am–11am27 flights—
- 11am–2pm144 flights93.1%
- 2pm–5pm192 flights73.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 93.1% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 73.7%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 193 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on TUS to SEA through the year
December is the weak month at 70.4% on time, against 100.0% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 60 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 91.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.8%. 12 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 52% of the 3,337 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.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
52% 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 3,337 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 3,337 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.2% 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 80.5% on time across 556 flights, 6 points below 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 556 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 Alaska on TUS to SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 556 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 86.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 551 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TUS to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to TUS, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on TUS to SEA89.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on TUS to SEA87.3%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.