Carrier performance at one airport

AS→PDX

Alaska Airlines at Portland International

Departures: 22,840
Period: June 2025 to May 2026
Routes: 25
Rank here: #3 of 9

Alaska Airlines at Portland lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.4%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 22,840 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 7,318 at 89.4% on time.

Measured against the airport rather than the country, Alaska Airlines runs half a point ahead of the 82.4% weighted average across all carriers at PDX. That is the comparison worth making: every operator here works the same runways, the same airspace and the same weather.

On time

82.8%

22,623 completed departures

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed flights only

Cancelled

0.74%

At PDX, this carrier only

Rank here

Of 9 carriers clearing the floor at PDX

These figures cover 23,000 flights between June 2025 and May 2026. The median arrival is 5 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Against the competition

Every carrier at PDX, ranked

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 89.4% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 57.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 540 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance of all carriers departing PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	7,318	89.4%	77 min	0.98%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	10,452	84.7%	63 min	0.57%	B+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	22,840	82.8%	47 min	0.74%	B+
United Airlines	6,521	82.3%	65 min	0.67%	B+
American Airlines	4,386	79.7%	98 min	1.92%	B
Southwest Airlines	8,633	77.1%	48 min	0.32%	B+
Frontier Airlines	1,008	76.1%	74 min	1.79%	B
Allegiant Air	436	72.1%	119 min	0.00%	C+
Hawaiian Airlines	540	57.7%	74 min	0.93%	D+

The spread between Delta and Hawaiian is 32 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 32 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Route by route

Where Alaska Airlines flies from PDX

Alaska Airlines operates 25 routes out of PDX with enough volume to report. Route records inside one carrier at one airport still spread widely, because a short shuttle and a transcontinental have very different exposure to a late inbound.

Alaska Airlines routes from PDX
Route	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
PDX to LAX · Los Angeles	1,940	85.8%	48 min	1.03%	A
PDX to SAN · San Diego	1,631	79.5%	42 min	0.74%	B+
PDX to SNA · Santa Ana	1,543	89.9%	35 min	1.43%	A
PDX to LAS · Las Vegas	1,522	83.1%	50 min	0.53%	B+
PDX to SFO · San Francisco	1,383	74.9%	55 min	0.51%	C+
PDX to PHX · Phoenix	1,369	83.0%	49 min	0.44%	B+
PDX to ANC · Anchorage	1,148	79.7%	46 min	0.00%	B+
PDX to SEA · Seattle	1,103	82.3%	45 min	1.27%	B
PDX to BUR · Burbank	965	85.5%	49 min	0.93%	A+
PDX to OGG · Kahului	717	88.8%	41 min	0.28%	A+
PDX to BOI · Boise	640	85.6%	43 min	0.31%	A+
PDX to AUS · Austin	607	83.4%	49 min	0.66%	B+
PDX to DEN · Denver	553	75.2%	57 min	0.36%	B+
PDX to BOS · Boston	533	82.4%	36 min	0.75%	B+
PDX to GEG · Spokane	527	84.0%	38 min	1.52%	B
PDX to DFW · Dallas-Fort Worth	523	82.1%	50 min	0.76%	B+
PDX to ORD · Chicago	518	74.0%	38 min	1.16%	C
PDX to PSP · Palm Springs	508	88.1%	43 min	0.98%	A+
PDX to MCO · Orlando	391	77.5%	46 min	0.51%	B+
PDX to HNL · Honolulu	388	66.8%	51 min	1.55%	C
PDX to DCA · Washingtonthin sample	364	84.6%	47 min	0.27%	B+
PDX to JFK · New Yorkthin sample	364	84.7%	34 min	1.92%	B
PDX to KOA · Kailua-Konathin sample	360	83.5%	49 min	0.00%	B+
PDX to IAH · Houstonthin sample	353	80.2%	48 min	0.85%	B+
PDX to ONT · Ontariothin sample	352	84.2%	55 min	0.57%	B+

Departure window

Best time of day for this operation

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 23,000 flights.

5am–8am5,903 flights83.9%
8am–11am5,409 flights82.1%
11am–2pm1,541 flights78.7%
2pm–5pm3,593 flights84.2%
5pm–8pm3,939 flights82.7%
8pm–5am2,455 flights81.9%

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 78.7% on time against 84.2% for 2pm–5pm. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise.

Across the year

Seasonal pattern

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.April best, December worst

December is the weak month at 77.2% on time, against 89.5% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days.

Delay causes

What holds this operation up

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
33%
Late-arriving aircraft
27%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

38% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 70,000 minutes out of 183,000, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.74%, below the national 1.80% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.2% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

22,840 flights sit behind these numbers, which is a large enough sample that the headline rate is not moving on noise. Where a sub-group falls below 30 flights the site shows a dash instead of a percentage.

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 89.5% on time and December 77.2%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else.

Common questions

Alaska Airlines at PDX

How often is Alaska Airlines at PDX delayed?

About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.2% of the 22,840 flights in this analysis, against 22.6% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.

Which airline is most reliable on Alaska Airlines at PDX?

Delta Air Lines leads at 89.4% on time across 7,318 flights. Hawaiian Airlines is at the other end on 57.7%, a gap of 32 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.

What time of day has the fewest delays on Alaska Airlines at PDX?

The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 84.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 78.7%, 6 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.

How bad are December delays on Alaska Airlines at PDX?

December is the weakest month at 77.2% on time, compared with 89.5% in April. Across the year that is 12 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, June 2025 to May 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures