Route profile
JFK→SEA
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from New York to Seattle, 2,422 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 36% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 9,123 flights. How this is calculated
JFK → SEA arrives on time 76.4% of the time; the return trip, SEA → JFK, arrives on time 74.8% of the time.
JFK → SEA spends 42.4 minutes on the ground on a 2,422-mile trip: 30.2 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at JFK and 12.2 minutes from touchdown to gate at SEA.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why JFK → SEA flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
JFK → SEA cancelled 176 of 9,123 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 52. The reason filed most often was extreme weather, 45.5% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 114 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 176 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
80 cancellations, 45.5% of the total.
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
74 cancellations, 42.0% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
22 cancellations, 12.5% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
176 coded cancellations were recorded on JFK → SEA; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
44 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 9,123 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at SEA after arriving from JFK.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 39% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 23% | High risk |
| 60 min | 14% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 7.4% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.7% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 1.93% of the time and diverts 0.22% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,927 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 44 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 9,123 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
JFK → SEA flights departing 9 AM–12 PM arrived on time 84.9% of the time, against 63.8% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 21.1 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 81.4% on time from 2,083 flights
- 8 AM: too few flights to score
- 9 AM: 81.7% on time from 475 flights
- 10 AM: too few flights to score
- 11 AM: 85.5% on time from 1,638 flights
- 12 PM: too few flights to score
- 1 PM: 75.2% on time from 132 flights
- 2 PM to 3 PM: too few flights to score
- 4 PM: 75.3% on time from 2,014 flights
- 5 PM: 71.9% on time from 360 flights
- 6 PM: 57.2% on time from 1,206 flights
- 7 PM: 72.8% on time from 779 flights
- 8 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why JFK → SEA runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
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 JFK → SEA. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 4,223 | 76.8% | 2.20% | -7 min | 7.3% |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,092 | 77.8% | 1.61% | -8 min | 6.7% |
| JetBlue | 808 | 67.8% | 2.10% | -4 min | 14.2% |
Alaska Airlines flew 46.3% of the 9,123 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 10.0 percentage points more often than JetBlue on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
| Flight | Scheduled | Operations | On time |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS31 Alaska Airlines | 7:30 AM | 1,111 | 80.6% |
| AS17 Alaska Airlines | 4:59 PM | 1,048 | 65.2% |
| AS23 Alaska Airlines | 11:45 AM | 1,006 | 85.0% |
| AS21 Alaska Airlines | 9:30 AM | 968 | 76.6% |
| DL699 Delta Air Lines | 7:00 AM | 814 | 81.2% |
| DL688 Delta Air Lines | 7:00 PM | 807 | 68.3% |
| DL740 Delta Air Lines | 4:40 PM | 800 | 72.8% |
| B6263 JetBlue | 4:30 PM | 674 | 65.3% |
AS23 (11:45 AM) arrived on time 85.0% of the time, 19.8 points more often than AS17 (4:59 PM) at 65.2%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.4 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 77.5%
- Feb: 79.9%
- Mar: 71.6%
- Apr: 83.2%
- May: 79.2%
- Jun: 64.0%
- Jul: 69.3%
- Aug: 76.3%
- Sep: 84.3%
- Oct: 81.7%
- Nov: 80.8%
- Dec: 73.9%
June is historically the weakest month and September the strongest, a spread of 20.3 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 69.9% from 305 flights
- August 2023: 83.8% from 292 flights
- September 2023: 81.7% from 265 flights
- October 2023: 82.0% from 278 flights
- November 2023: 83.9% from 273 flights
- December 2023: 94.1% from 270 flights
- January 2024: 85.2% from 189 flights
- February 2024: 92.5% from 177 flights
- March 2024: 85.1% from 222 flights
- April 2024: 85.7% from 253 flights
- May 2024: 81.3% from 279 flights
- June 2024: 59.9% from 270 flights
- July 2024: 74.5% from 279 flights
- August 2024: 70.4% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 87.0% from 270 flights
- October 2024: 86.9% from 246 flights
- November 2024: 92.3% from 235 flights
- December 2024: 83.5% from 236 flights
- January 2025: 81.1% from 164 flights
- February 2025: 72.7% from 162 flights
- March 2025: 80.0% from 217 flights
- April 2025: 82.7% from 228 flights
- May 2025: 76.3% from 279 flights
- June 2025: 56.0% from 270 flights
- July 2025: 63.8% from 279 flights
- August 2025: 73.9% from 278 flights
- September 2025: 83.9% from 270 flights
- October 2025: 76.7% from 273 flights
- November 2025: 65.0% from 234 flights
- December 2025: 38.2% from 232 flights
- January 2026: 66.9% from 187 flights
- February 2026: 73.8% from 180 flights
- March 2026: 48.6% from 215 flights
- April 2026: 80.8% from 225 flights
- May 2026: 80.2% from 263 flights
- June 2026: 76.1% from 270 flights
- July 2026: 68.8% from 279 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 70.0% against 77.3% in the 12 months before — declining by 7.3 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 9,123 JFK → SEA flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed