Originally Posted by
jrl767
not at all uncommon for ATC to meter the arrival flow into SEA, particularly at peak hours
BOI (and PDX, where I’ve experienced it more than a few times) is close enough to where they impose the delay in terms of a wheels-up time, whereas flights from more distant points generally get some enroute vectoring (similar to what SJC ORD LDR described) and/or airspeed adjustments
This.
If you pay attention, you can often find flights flying in little S patterns or even doing loops to slow themselves down and sequence in during busy periods at big hubs all over the place. Schedule padding and "loops" actually being pretty wide turns mean it's not noticeable in the air (at least, to me), but it definitely is looking at a map.
BOI is close enough that they're likely given a slot upon takeoff instead of dealing with it in the air, I think? I've seen this at GEG, MFR and other airports super close to SEA. AS significantly un-delayed a flight I was on from MFR once because we'd unexpectedly gotten an arrival slot - we had to board and takeoff within 20 minutes or risk waiting around another hour.
SEA's growth really is amazing for the size of airport - at the 6th busiest by passenger traffic in the USA, it flies an entire extra SJC (14m passengers) over DTW, and 3m more people than EWR every year. Amazingly enough, LGW and BOM manage to carry about the same number of passengers operating from a
single runway.
Without getting into OMNI territory, it definitely doesn't help that short regional flights would be train rides in other parts of the world. SEA-GEG/PDX/PSC/YVR are a significant number of aircraft movements every day (the real limiting factor here, not pax) and, if replaced by trains, would ease a significant amount of the burden placed on SEA and likely improve passenger experience significantly.
Personally, moving from NYC where I flew out of JFK/LGA to Seattle means my airport experience got markedly better overall. It's a much shorter one-chair ride on the Link to get to the airport, and I've yet to hit the insane wait times for both departure and arrival I regularly saw from the northeast. The SEA lounge alone makes the experience a great upgrade from the crowded JFK SCs.