Route profile
SEA→JFK
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Seattle to New York, 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 32% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 9,123 flights. How this is calculated
SEA → JFK arrives on time 74.8% of the time; the return trip, JFK → SEA, arrives on time 76.4% of the time.
SEA → JFK spends 35.5 minutes on the ground on a 2,422-mile trip: 22.0 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at SEA and 13.5 minutes from touchdown to gate at JFK.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
The airline matters unusually much on this route, a wider carrier-to-carrier gap than 94% of 2,692 comparable routes.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 81.9% of the time, against 61.7% for JetBlue, flying the exact same route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 2,692 in the comparison.
Why SEA → JFK flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
SEA → JFK cancelled 164 of 9,123 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 56. The reason filed most often was the airline, 47.6% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 117 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 164 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.
78 cancellations, 47.6% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
69 cancellations, 42.1% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
17 cancellations, 10.4% 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.
164 coded cancellations were recorded on SEA → JFK; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
45 min late
against a median of 5 min early
Percentiles over 9,123 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at JFK after arriving from SEA.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 42% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 24% | High risk |
| 60 min | 15% | Some risk |
| 90 min | 7.5% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.5% | 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 1.80% of the time and diverts 0.62% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 8,902 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 45 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 9,123 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
SEA → JFK flights departing 5–9 AM arrived on time 82.7% of the time, against 59.4% for 12–3 PM departures, a gap of 23.3 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 6 AM: too few flights to score
- 7 AM: 83.2% on time from 1,936 flights
- 8 AM: 75.8% on time from 259 flights
- 9 AM: 74.8% on time from 120 flights
- 10 AM: 72.4% on time from 197 flights
- 11 AM: 71.4% on time from 1,061 flights
- 12 PM: too few flights to score
- 1 PM: 62.8% on time from 408 flights
- 2 PM: 57.4% on time from 1,112 flights
- 3 PM: 81.0% on time from 566 flights
- 4 PM: 76.4% on time from 211 flights
- 5 PM to 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 78.6% on time from 915 flights
- 10 PM: 76.3% on time from 798 flights
- 11 PM: 76.2% on time from 1,391 flights
Departure windows with fewer than 120 flights are not scored.
Why SEA → JFK 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 SEA → JFK. 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 | 70.4% | 1.78% | -1 min | 8.3% |
| Delta Air Lines | 4,092 | 81.9% | 1.61% | -9 min | 5.3% |
| JetBlue | 808 | 61.7% | 2.85% | 4 min | 15.1% |
Alaska Airlines flew 46.3% of the 9,123 flights listed. JetBlue cancelled 2.85% of its flights here against 1.61% for Delta Air Lines.
Delta Air Lines arrived on time 20.2 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS34 Alaska Airlines | 7:36 AM | 1,126 | 72.7% |
| AS16 Alaska Airlines | 2:40 PM | 1,077 | 54.5% |
| AS22 Alaska Airlines | 9:40 PM | 971 | 76.5% |
| AS26 Alaska Airlines | 11:38 PM | 965 | 78.8% |
| DL429 Delta Air Lines | 7:10 AM | 785 | 87.2% |
| DL415 Delta Air Lines | 11:15 AM | 781 | 75.0% |
| DL452 Delta Air Lines | 9:45 PM | 781 | 83.6% |
| B6264 JetBlue | 11:20 PM | 674 | 62.6% |
DL429 (7:10 AM) arrived on time 87.2% of the time, 32.7 points more often than AS16 (2:40 PM) at 54.5%.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 8.3 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 78.8%
- Feb: 81.9%
- Mar: 78.5%
- Apr: 78.6%
- May: 73.7%
- Jun: 69.3%
- Jul: 63.1%
- Aug: 69.4%
- Sep: 72.4%
- Oct: 78.2%
- Nov: 88.1%
- Dec: 77.1%
July is historically the weakest month and November the strongest, a spread of 25.0 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 66.0% from 305 flights
- August 2023: 72.8% from 292 flights
- September 2023: 65.2% from 263 flights
- October 2023: 77.4% from 279 flights
- November 2023: 87.5% from 273 flights
- December 2023: 77.2% from 272 flights
- January 2024: 80.4% from 186 flights
- February 2024: 75.4% from 177 flights
- March 2024: 77.4% from 224 flights
- April 2024: 75.4% from 253 flights
- May 2024: 75.1% from 279 flights
- June 2024: 76.6% from 270 flights
- July 2024: 65.7% from 279 flights
- August 2024: 69.9% from 279 flights
- September 2024: 75.1% from 269 flights
- October 2024: 81.4% from 248 flights
- November 2024: 93.2% from 234 flights
- December 2024: 81.4% from 237 flights
- January 2025: 79.6% from 163 flights
- February 2025: 81.4% from 162 flights
- March 2025: 77.4% from 217 flights
- April 2025: 76.9% from 228 flights
- May 2025: 64.7% from 279 flights
- June 2025: 53.0% from 270 flights
- July 2025: 49.2% from 279 flights
- August 2025: 65.3% from 278 flights
- September 2025: 76.4% from 270 flights
- October 2025: 75.9% from 273 flights
- November 2025: 83.5% from 234 flights
- December 2025: 72.1% from 232 flights
- January 2026: 76.5% from 187 flights
- February 2026: 89.2% from 181 flights
- March 2026: 80.8% from 214 flights
- April 2026: 83.9% from 225 flights
- May 2026: 82.0% from 263 flights
- June 2026: 78.1% from 270 flights
- July 2026: 71.6% from 279 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 77.4% against 72.5% in the 12 months before — improving by 4.9 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 9,123 SEA → JFK 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