Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS516
Seattle (SEA) to Fort Lauderdale (FLL) · scheduled 7:55 AM – 10:30 PM
How AS516 performs
1,097 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AS516 arrived on time 79.7% of the time, against 81.2% for all SEA → FLL flights, so this departure is 1.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Alaska Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 1.9 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,097 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS516 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS516 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS516 | 79.7% | 1.28% | -7 min | 5.3% | 1,097 |
| Alaska Airlines on SEA → FLL | 81.6% | 1.64% | -7 min | 4.3% | 1,589 |
| All SEA → FLL flights | 81.2% | 1.40% | -7 min | 4.7% | 2,712 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS516 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS516 on SEA → FLL. 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 AS516 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AS516 pushed back an average of 10 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 4 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, 919 of 1,083 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS516 | 21% | 21% | 13% |
| Network, same turn | 23% | 40% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a long gap on the ground, which gives a late aircraft room to catch up before this flight pushes back.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 90 minutes to 3 hours. How often AS516’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AS516 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 FLL?
AS516 pushes back an average of 7.2 minutes late and reaches the gate at FLL an average of 0.1 minutes late. The 7.1 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. Its 24.4 minutes on the taxiways at SEA is about what any departure from the airport in that hour spends.
On arrival at FLL, AS516 spends 10.1 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 2.7 minutes longer than a typical FLL arrival (7.4 min).
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 FLL. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 42,963 departures from SEA scheduled in the clock hour AS516 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at FLL (278,720 flights), not just AS516’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. AS516 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 42,963 departures from SEA are scheduled in the 7 AM–8 AM hour over the period, against 510,205 across the whole day.
AS516 is scheduled out of SEA at 7:55 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from SEA in that hour arrive on time 85.0% of the time against 79.1% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 5.9 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.
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 AS516 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 15.7 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
29 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 1,097 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS516 this flight | Alaska Airlines | 79.7% | 7 min early | 1,097 |
| DL338 | Delta Air Lines | 77.2% | 5 min early | 782 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AS516 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 1,097 records of AS516 operating SEA → FLL, 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