The sector is held by Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.
Airport pair · hand carry reference
SFO San Francisco to SEA Seattle
San Francisco International, the United States, to Seattle Tacoma International, the United States. Computed from the scheduled network held on 2026-09-07.
- Nonstop
- 23.7 times a day
- Great circle
- 1,093 km
- Block, estimated
- 1h 54m
- Door to door
- 8h 39m
What SFO to SEA looks like
The SFO to SEA sector, the carriers on it and the flying time, before anything is promised to anybody.
San Francisco SFO to Seattle SEA is a short sector of 1,093 km by great circle, flown nonstop 23.7 times a day.
At the cruise speed this site models for 1,093 km, 830 km an hour, and thirty minutes of taxi at the two ends, the flight blocks at about 1h 54m.
San Francisco SFO is a major hub in the network held here, 189 scheduled destinations and 656.9 departures a day. Seattle SEA has 145 destinations and 717.9 departures a day.
San Francisco and Seattle keep the same clock all year, so the arrival time is the departure time plus the block and nothing else.
The pair sits inside the Americas, a corridor where the site already publishes 13 written lanes that go into customs and ground detail this page does not.
Who flies the sector, and how often
Average daily frequencies on SFO to SEA from the scheduled route statistics, both directions, with the operating carriers named.
| Direction | Flights a day | Flights a week | Operated by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SFO to SEA | 23.71 | 166 | Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines |
| SEA to SFO | 22.71 | 159 | Alaska Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines |
3 carriers are recorded on the sector, so a missed departure is normally a rebooking rather than a lost day.
At 23.7 times a day there is usually another departure within a few hours, which is what makes a same day booking on this pair realistic.
Between them the two directions put about 324.9 departures a week on SFO to SEA, which is the number that decides whether a seat can be found today or on Thursday.
The clock from collection to signature
The same ground timings the route calculator starts from, applied to the 1h 54m block time on SFO to SEA. Change any of them in the tool further down and the total moves with them.
| Stage | Allowed | Elapsed |
|---|---|---|
| Collection and the run to SFO | 90 min | 1h 30m |
| At SFO before departure | 180 min | 4h 30m |
| SFO to SEA in the air, estimated | 114 min | 6h 24m |
| Formalities at SEA | 90 min | 7h 54m |
| Delivery run in Seattle | 45 min | 8h 39m |
| Door to door | 519 min | 8h 39m |
On the desk standard ground timings, ninety minutes to collect and reach the airport, three hours at the airport before departure, ninety minutes of arrival formalities and a forty five minute delivery run, the door to door figure for SFO to SEA is 8h 39m.
A courier who leaves San Francisco at 09:00 local is on the ground in Seattle at about 10:54 local and at the door by 13:09 the same day.
Working backwards from a six in the evening handover in Seattle, the last useful departure from San Francisco is around 13:51 local.
When the nonstop does not work
Every airport that joins the two ends, ranked by when they land, among the ones whose weaker leg is dependable enough to plan on. Connection time is allowed for the size of the hub. 74 of them join SFO to SEA.
| Connecting at | SFO to hub, flights a day | Hub to SEA, flights a day | Track, km | Estimated, gate to gate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Portland PDX | 14.14 | 22.43 | 1,094 | 3h 41m |
| San Jose SJC | 1.57 | 15.71 | 1,171 | 3h 45m |
| Boise BOI | 5.43 | 15.57 | 1,481 | 4h 01m |
| Vancouver YVR | 10.43 | 14.86 | 1,494 | 4h 12m |
| Salt Lake City SLC | 10 | 12.71 | 2,069 | 4h 54m |
| Los Angeles LAX | 42.71 | 26.29 | 2,080 | 5h 16m |
With 23.7 times a day on the nonstop, a connection here is a disruption plan rather than a routing, and it is listed because a closed runway or a cancellation wave is exactly when nobody has time to work it out.
74 airports connect the two ends on the scheduled network held here. The quickest of the dependable ones is Portland PDX, where the weaker of the two legs still runs 14.1 times a day.
Through PDX the routing covers 1,094 km against the 1,093 km nonstop track and takes about 3h 41m in the air and on the ground at the hub, allowing 75 minutes to connect at an airport of that size.
That is only 1h 47m more than the nonstop, which is close enough that a connection is worth taking when the nonstop is full or badly timed.
Behind it, San Jose SJC at 3h 45m and Boise BOI at 4h 01m hold the same connection, so a booking has three hubs to try before it has to wait for the nonstop.
If nothing suitable leaves San Francisco, Oakland OAK is 18 km away by great circle and carries 89 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
If nothing suitable leaves Seattle, Victoria YYJ is 157 km away by great circle and carries 22 scheduled destinations of its own, which is usually a shorter road transfer than a lost day.
Industry within reach of the two ends
Public manufacturing and research sites whose logistics run through SFO or SEA. Listed as industrial geography, not as customers of anyone.
- Genentech, South San FranciscoBiotechnology research and manufacturing. The original biotech cluster, and still the densest. Logistics through San Francisco SFO.
- Boeing, Everett and RentonWidebody and 737 final assembly. A European supplier base and an American line, eight time zones apart. Logistics through Seattle SEA.
Plan San Francisco to Seattle yourself
The same tool the dispatchers use, open to anybody and free. It is loaded with this pair already. Change either end, add a stopover or a preferred airline, and it works out the connection, the transit and the door to door clock, with the real departures underneath. Put it on your own site if it is useful to you.
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Restrictions
Where this came from, and where to look next
- Carriers and frequencies: AeroDataBox scheduled route statistics, retrieved 2026-09-07. Average daily flights, not a timetable.
- Distances: great circle from published coordinates. They read short against a flown track, which is why the block time above applies a factor to them.
- Block and connection times: the same model the route calculator lower down this page runs, at the same rounding.
- Restrictions: the airport notes file, checked 2026-09-07.
- Industrial sites: public company information. Nothing here says or implies that any company named is a customer of any courier operator.
Who publishes this. OnBoard Courier is a placement desk in Dubai. An assignment is carried out by a vetted partner operator, with the desk as the single point of contact from the quote to the signature. This page exists because our own dispatchers need the answer for SFO to SEA in the twenty minutes before a promise is made, and a reference only one operator can read is not a reference. Free to read, quote and cite. Found an error? Tell us and we will correct it.
If you need something moved rather than looked up, the desk prices a hand carry in fifteen minutes.
- The SFO airport entry
- The SEA airport entry
- Hand carry into the United States
- The written lane, Dubai to San Francisco
- The written lane, San Francisco to Taipei
- The written lane, Seoul to San Francisco
- The route calculator
More pairs through SFO and SEA: Atlanta to Seattle, London to Seattle, Seattle to Boston, Seattle to Los Angeles, Detroit to Seattle, Seattle to Chicago, Seattle to Seoul, Seattle to Taipei.