Carrier route record

OOTUS→SEA

SkyWest Airlines · Tucson to Seattle

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 TUS 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 an hour. That rests on 371 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's TUS to SEA record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 97 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 371 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.0%

Every carrier on TUS to SEA, 1,065 flights

These figures cover 371 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 TUS to SEA

SkyWest flew 371 of the 1,065 flights on TUS to SEA, about 35% of it. Its 87.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TUS to SEA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Linesthin sample	138	89.0%	152 min	1.45%	A
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	371	87.3%	65 min	0.00%	A+
Alaska Airlines	556	86.2%	44 min	0.90%	A+

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 12 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–8am116 flights91.4%
8am–11am28 flights—
11am–2pm179 flights88.8%
2pm–5pm48 flights79.2%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.4% of the time, against 79.2% for the afternoon window. That is 12 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 179 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on TUS to SEA through the year

Jul–Sep 2025184 flights90.2%
Oct–Dec 202583 flights85.5%
Apr–Jun 2026104 flights83.7%

Scale runs 75% 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 87.3% on time across 371 flights.

Quarter by quarter SkyWest on TUS to SEA held fairly steady: 90.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 85.5% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Thursday the weakest at 81.5%. 15 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 50% of the 3,074 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
50%
Late-arriving aircraft
30%
Extreme weather
12%
National Airspace System
9%

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 3,074 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 1,532 of the 3,074 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 3.8% 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 83.0% on time across 371 flights, 4 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 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 TUS to SEA

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 87.3% 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