Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS494
Seattle (SEA) to San Antonio (SAT) · scheduled 12:35 PM – 6:37 PM
How AS494 performs
1,066 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AS494 arrived on time 73.9% of the time, against 75.6% for all SEA → SAT flights, so this departure is 1.7 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Alaska Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 1.7 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,066 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS494 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS494 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 AS494 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS494 | 73.9% | 0.66% | -1 min | 3.2% | 1,066 |
| Alaska Airlines on SEA → SAT | 75.6% | 0.56% | -1 min | 3.2% | 1,782 |
| All SEA → SAT flights | 75.6% | 0.56% | -1 min | 3.2% | 1,782 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS494 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
screening or terminal security incidents
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS494 on SEA → SAT. 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 AS494 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AS494 pushed back an average of 22 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 5 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into SEA just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 976 of 1,060 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 | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS494 | 21% | 55% | 19% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
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 AS494’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AS494 left 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s.
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 SAT?
AS494 pushes back an average of 10.0 minutes late and reaches the gate at SAT an average of 5.0 minutes late. The 5.1 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 21.8 minutes on the taxiways at SEA, 1.0 minutes shorter than a typical SEA departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SAT, AS494 spends 5.3 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 SAT 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 SAT. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 24,242 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour AS494 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SAT (127,244 flights), not just AS494’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. AS494 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 24,242 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 12 PM–1 PM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
AS494 is scheduled out of SEA at 12:35 PM, in the 12 PM–1 PM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 78.0% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour AS494 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 AS494 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 12.8 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 AS494 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAT→SEA San Antonio to Seattle | November 17, 2023 – July 31, 2026 | 768 | 67.5% |
Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route AS494 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.
36 min late
against a median of 1 min early
Percentiles over 1,066 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,066 records of AS494 operating SEA → SAT, 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