Carrier performance at one airport
AS→PDX
Alaska Airlines at Portland International
- Departures
- 23,363
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Routes
- 25
- Rank here
- #3 of 9
Alaska Airlines at Portland lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 23,363 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 7,258 at 89.6% on time.
Measured against the airport rather than the country, Alaska Airlines runs half a point ahead of the 82.7% 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.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
23,149 completed departures
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed flights only
Cancelled
0.71%
At PDX, this carrier only
Rank here
#3
Of 9 carriers clearing the floor at PDX
These figures cover 23,000 flights between July 2025 and June 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 89.6% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 464 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 7,258 | 89.6% | 79 min | 0.96% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 10,519 | 85.4% | 64 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 23,363 | 83.2% | 47 min | 0.71% | B+ |
| United Airlines | 6,566 | 81.8% | 66 min | 0.62% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 4,445 | 80.0% | 104 min | 2.16% | B |
| Frontier Airlines | 939 | 78.2% | 75 min | 1.81% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 8,596 | 76.4% | 48 min | 0.33% | B+ |
| Allegiant Air | 413 | 71.2% | 145 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 464 | 58.7% | 71 min | 1.08% | D |
The spread between Delta and Hawaiian is 31 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 31 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.
| Route | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDX to LAX · Los Angeles | 1,897 | 86.5% | 49 min | 0.84% | A+ |
| PDX to SAN · San Diego | 1,605 | 78.9% | 42 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| PDX to SNA · Santa Ana | 1,546 | 90.8% | 35 min | 1.23% | A |
| PDX to LAS · Las Vegas | 1,534 | 82.7% | 51 min | 0.52% | B+ |
| PDX to SFO · San Francisco | 1,383 | 72.0% | 55 min | 0.51% | C+ |
| PDX to PHX · Phoenix | 1,375 | 83.8% | 48 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| PDX to ANC · Anchorage | 1,179 | 81.3% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PDX to SEA · Seattle | 1,125 | 82.6% | 42 min | 1.16% | B |
| PDX to BUR · Burbank | 976 | 86.9% | 52 min | 1.02% | A |
| PDX to OGG · Kahului | 728 | 89.8% | 38 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| PDX to BOI · Boise | 659 | 85.7% | 44 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| PDX to AUS · Austin | 607 | 84.4% | 52 min | 0.49% | B+ |
| PDX to DEN · Denver | 582 | 76.8% | 52 min | 0.34% | B+ |
| PDX to GEG · Spokane | 549 | 86.1% | 41 min | 1.46% | A |
| PDX to BOS · Boston | 533 | 82.0% | 36 min | 0.75% | B+ |
| PDX to ORD · Chicago | 510 | 74.5% | 39 min | 1.37% | C |
| PDX to PSP · Palm Springs | 508 | 88.1% | 43 min | 0.98% | A+ |
| PDX to DFW · Dallas-Fort Worth | 493 | 83.5% | 46 min | 0.81% | B+ |
| PDX to HNL · Honolulu | 453 | 65.5% | 47 min | 1.55% | C |
| PDX to ONT · Ontario | 404 | 84.8% | 54 min | 0.50% | B+ |
| PDX to MCO · Orlando | 391 | 79.2% | 47 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| PDX to KOA · Kailua-Kona | 365 | 84.8% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| PDX to DCA · Washingtonthin sample | 364 | 84.9% | 45 min | 0.27% | B+ |
| PDX to JFK · New Yorkthin sample | 364 | 82.8% | 49 min | 1.92% | B |
| PDX to IAH · Houstonthin sample | 353 | 83.1% | 44 min | 0.85% | 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–8am6,092 flights84.3%
- 8am–11am5,608 flights82.5%
- 11am–2pm1,488 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm3,650 flights84.5%
- 5pm–8pm4,018 flights82.7%
- 8pm–5am2,507 flights82.9%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 84.5% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.
Across the year
Seasonal pattern
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. June was the busiest month here, with 2,200 flights.
Delay causes
What holds this operation up
- 39%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 26%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 182,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 182,345 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.
23,363 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. 23,149 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
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 16.8% of the 23,363 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% 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 89.6% on time across 7,258 flights. Hawaiian Airlines is at the other end on 58.7%, a gap of 31 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 84.5% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 79.8%, 5 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.
Related
Where to go next
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.