Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS406
Seattle (SEA) to Washington (IAD) · scheduled 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM
How AS406 performs
869 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AS406 arrived on time 75.6% of the time, against 81.3% for all SEA → IAD flights, so this departure is 5.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Alaska Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 3.1 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 869 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS406 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS406 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of AS406 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS406 | 75.6% | 1.04% | 0 min | 3.9% | 869 |
| Alaska Airlines on SEA → IAD | 78.7% | 0.46% | -3 min | 3.3% | 2,624 |
| All SEA → IAD flights | 81.3% | 1.10% | -6 min | 5.1% | 6,525 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS406 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS406 on SEA → IAD. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies AS406 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
The aircraft flying AS406 came in 15 or more minutes late on 13% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 766 of 860 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late |
|---|---|
| AS406 | 13% |
| Network, same turn | 17% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often AS406’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s. There are not enough departures in both groups to compare how it left.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves SEA late, does that still matter by the time it reaches IAD?
AS406 pushes back an average of 9.3 minutes late and reaches the gate at IAD an average of 4.5 minutes late. The 4.8 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 25.0 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 1.2 minutes longer than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at IAD, AS406 spends 7.9 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at IAD spends on the ground before reaching the gate.
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached IAD. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 30,717 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour AS406 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at IAD (169,930 flights), not just AS406’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves SEA
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AS406 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 30,717 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 10 AM–11 AM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
AS406 is scheduled out of SEA at 10:00 AM, in the 10 AM–11 AM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 77.8% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour AS406 leaves in is an ordinary one for SEA and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from SEA to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does AS406 run worse on particular days?
Thursday is historically the most reliable day and Monday the least, a gap of 8.9 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
Other routes AS406 has flown
A flight number is a slot in a schedule, and carriers reassign it. These are the other city pairs this number served in the analysis period.
| Route | Operated | Flights | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEA→DTW Seattle to Detroit | May 13, 2026 – June 9, 2026 | 28 | — |
| SEA→GEG Seattle to Spokane | April 22, 2026 – May 12, 2026 | 21 | — |
| GEG→SEA Spokane to Seattle | March 18, 2026 | 1 | — |
| IAD→SEA Washington to Seattle | February 15, 2024 – March 16, 2026 | 381 | 65.7% |
| SEA→PDX Seattle to Portland | December 2–17, 2025 | 16 | — |
| SEA→MSO Seattle to Missoula | October 26, 2025 – November 20, 2025 | 25 | — |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AS406 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
33 min late
against a median of 0 min early
Percentiles over 869 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL541 | Delta Air Lines | 77.7% | 5 min early | 657 |
| AS348 | Alaska Airlines | 76.6% | 2 min early | 687 |
| AS406 this flight | Alaska Airlines | 75.6% | 0 min early | 869 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AS406 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 869 records of AS406 operating SEA → IAD, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed