Route profile
SEA→ATL
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Seattle to Atlanta, 2,182 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 79% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,595 flights. How this is calculated
SEA → ATL arrives on time 81.8% of the time; the return trip, ATL → SEA, arrives on time 80.0% of the time.
SEA → ATL spends 30.3 minutes on the ground on a 2,182-mile trip: 21.4 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SEA and 8.9 minutes from touchdown to gate at ATL.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Why SEA → ATL flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SEA → ATL cancelled 80 of 10,595 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 132. The reason filed most often was the airline, 71.3% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 186 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 80 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
57 cancellations, 71.3% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
23 cancellations, 28.7% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
0 cancellations, 0.0% 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. With only one or two carriers on the route, the split mostly reflects how they file. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
80 coded cancellations were recorded on SEA → ATL; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
31 min late
against a median of 7 min early
Percentiles over 10,595 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at ATL after arriving from SEA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 36% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 17% | High risk |
| 60 min | 10% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 4.6% | Low risk |
| 120 min | 2.7% | 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 0.76% of the time and diverts 0.37% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,476 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 31 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,595 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SEA → ATL flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 87.5% of the time, against 76.7% for 9 AM–12 PM departures, a gap of 10.8 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 5 AM: too few flights to score
- 6 AM: 91.5% on time from 1,335 flights
- 7 AM: 84.8% on time from 1,115 flights
- 8 AM: 83.1% on time from 524 flights
- 9 AM: 75.8% on time from 426 flights
- 10 AM: 76.6% on time from 662 flights
- 11 AM: 77.4% on time from 767 flights
- 12 PM: 87.0% on time from 394 flights
- 1 PM: 79.9% on time from 545 flights
- 2 PM: 67.0% on time from 177 flights
- 3 PM: 84.4% on time from 885 flights
- 4 PM: 76.7% on time from 941 flights
- 5 PM: 78.9% on time from 200 flights
- 6 PM to 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 82.1% on time from 618 flights
- 10 PM: 81.1% on time from 526 flights
- 11 PM: 80.3% on time from 1,479 flights
Why SEA → ATL runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
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 SEA → ATL. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
The harder-hit end is ATL, where the flight lands. Its figure counts departures from ATL, so it says more about how that airport copes than about this route. Bad weather cancels 3.3 times the normal rate at ATL against 1.9 times at SEA. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: SEA 1.5% against 0.8%, ATL 3.4% against 1.0%. Flights that did leave ATL in bad weather arrived on time 66.5% of the time, against 80.2% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | SEA | ATL |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.5% | 3.4% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.8% | 1.0% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 75.4% | 66.5% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 79.3% | 80.2% |
| Departures in bad weather | 43,416 | 105,854 |
Of the carriers on this route, Delta Air Lines (1.1% cancelled against 1.6% for the other carriers at SEA) cancelled the fewest departures from SEA in bad weather and Alaska Airlines (1.8% cancelled against 1.2% for the other carriers at SEA) the most.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at SEA
All departures from SEA| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 9,020 | 1.1%below the others | 1.6% |
| Alaska Airlines | 20,261 | 1.8%above the others | 1.2% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from SEA and ATL, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from SEA on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: SEA (airlines), ATL, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 7,458 | 83.8% | 0.71% | -8 min | 4.8% |
| Alaska Airlines | 3,137 | 77.1% | 0.86% | -3 min | 4.4% |
Delta Air Lines flew 70.4% of the 10,595 flights listed.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 6.7 percentage points more often than Alaska Airlines on this route.
Flights on this route
Flight numbers with at least 600 operations here and still on the schedule.
DL569 (6:00 AM) arrived on time 91.7% of the time, 15.8 points more often than AS334 (6:30 AM) at 75.9%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Wednesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 6.8 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 83.0%
- Feb: 87.5%
- Mar: 83.9%
- Apr: 82.1%
- May: 80.8%
- Jun: 78.4%
- Jul: 73.8%
- Aug: 79.1%
- Sep: 85.3%
- Oct: 86.3%
- Nov: 87.9%
- Dec: 82.7%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 14.1 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 82.3% from 372 flights
- August 2023: 82.1% from 380 flights
- September 2023: 87.5% from 321 flights
- October 2023: 90.1% from 314 flights
- November 2023: 89.2% from 287 flights
- December 2023: 84.2% from 273 flights
- January 2024: 79.6% from 233 flights
- February 2024: 87.1% from 211 flights
- March 2024: 83.3% from 251 flights
- April 2024: 82.9% from 269 flights
- May 2024: 79.7% from 312 flights
- June 2024: 80.7% from 348 flights
- July 2024: 67.3% from 377 flights
- August 2024: 75.7% from 374 flights
- September 2024: 78.8% from 330 flights
- October 2024: 83.3% from 299 flights
- November 2024: 87.5% from 263 flights
- December 2024: 84.4% from 270 flights
- January 2025: 83.2% from 215 flights
- February 2025: 84.2% from 184 flights
- March 2025: 87.8% from 224 flights
- April 2025: 77.6% from 243 flights
- May 2025: 80.0% from 292 flights
- June 2025: 70.7% from 329 flights
- July 2025: 69.3% from 347 flights
- August 2025: 79.6% from 316 flights
- September 2025: 90.1% from 284 flights
- October 2025: 85.2% from 295 flights
- November 2025: 87.0% from 256 flights
- December 2025: 79.2% from 269 flights
- January 2026: 86.3% from 213 flights
- February 2026: 91.1% from 191 flights
- March 2026: 80.8% from 231 flights
- April 2026: 85.5% from 251 flights
- May 2026: 82.8% from 298 flights
- June 2026: 83.6% from 325 flights
- July 2026: 76.0% from 348 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 83.5% against 79.4% in the 12 months before — improving by 4.1 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,595 SEA → ATL 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