Carrier performance at one airport

AS→PDX

Alaska Airlines at Portland International

Departures: 24,677
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Routes: 25
Rank here: #3 of 7

Alaska Airlines at Portland lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That rests on 24,677 flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 7,151 at 90.1% on time.

Measured against the airport rather than the country, Alaska Airlines runs half a point ahead of the 82.8% 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

83.0%

24,449 completed departures

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed flights only

Cancelled

0.66%

At PDX, this carrier only

Rank here

Of 7 carriers clearing the floor at PDX

These figures cover 25,000 flights between September 2025 and August 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 90.1% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 75.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 8,585 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	7,151	90.1%	74 min	1.08%	A
SkyWest Airlines	10,587	85.3%	64 min	0.55%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	24,677	83.0%	46 min	0.66%	B+
American Airlines	4,484	81.3%	111 min	1.83%	B
United Airlines	6,624	80.6%	65 min	0.59%	B+
Frontier Airlines	799	79.6%	78 min	1.25%	B
Southwest Airlines	8,585	75.7%	48 min	0.33%	B+

The spread between Delta and Southwest is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 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	1,817	85.8%	45 min	0.44%	A+
PDX to SAN · San Diego	1,586	75.1%	37 min	0.82%	B+
PDX to LAS · Las Vegas	1,571	83.2%	52 min	0.45%	B+
PDX to SNA · Santa Ana	1,543	90.9%	37 min	0.97%	A+
PDX to PHX · Phoenix	1,440	83.1%	46 min	0.42%	B+
PDX to SFO · San Francisco	1,403	67.4%	52 min	0.43%	C+
PDX to ANC · Anchorage	1,239	83.4%	48 min	0.00%	B+
PDX to SEA · Seattle	1,205	82.1%	42 min	1.24%	B
PDX to BUR · Burbank	982	87.0%	54 min	0.81%	A+
PDX to OGG · Kahului	728	89.4%	42 min	0.41%	A+
PDX to BOI · Boise	722	84.9%	45 min	0.28%	B+
PDX to DEN · Denver	643	78.6%	54 min	0.31%	B+
PDX to HNL · Honolulu	612	63.5%	49 min	1.96%	D
PDX to AUS · Austin	609	83.7%	48 min	0.99%	B+
PDX to GEG · Spokane	605	85.1%	38 min	1.32%	A
PDX to BOS · Boston	538	82.7%	41 min	0.74%	B+
PDX to PSP · Palm Springs	508	88.1%	43 min	0.98%	A+
PDX to ORD · Chicago	500	78.9%	44 min	1.40%	B
PDX to ONT · Ontario	477	85.0%	50 min	0.63%	A+
PDX to SMF · Sacramento	452	92.4%	44 min	0.88%	A+
PDX to DFW · Dallas-Fort Worth	436	85.5%	40 min	0.69%	A+
PDX to EWR · Newark	407	87.2%	79 min	1.72%	A
PDX to MCO · Orlando	391	86.0%	43 min	0.00%	A+
PDX to JFK · New York	374	82.5%	60 min	1.87%	B
PDX to KOA · Kailua-Kona	365	86.5%	41 min	0.00%	A+

Flight by flight

Alaska Airlines flight numbers from PDX

33 Alaska Airlines flight numbers leaving PDX flew their main route often enough to have a record of their own. Grouped by destination.

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 25,000 flights.

5am–8am6,497 flights84.9%
8am–11am6,068 flights82.1%
11am–2pm1,400 flights82.3%
2pm–5pm3,832 flights83.1%
5pm–8pm4,238 flights81.1%
8pm–5am2,642 flights83.2%

Scale runs 75% to 90%.

The time of day barely matters here. The 5am–8am window tops the set at 84.9% and 5pm–8pm sits at 81.1%, 4 points apart across 24,677 flights. Pick the departure that suits the trip: whatever is going wrong here is not accumulating over the course of the day. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 6,497 flights scheduled in it.

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. August was the busiest month here, with 2,430 flights.

Delay causes

What holds this operation up

National Airspace System
38%
Carrier
35%
Late-arriving aircraft
26%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 68,000 of the 193,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 193,241 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, below the national 1.89% 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 8.3% 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.

24,677 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. 24,449 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 arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.0% of the 24,677 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% 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 90.1% on time across 7,151 flights. Southwest Airlines is at the other end on 75.7%, a gap of 14 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 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 84.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 81.1%, 4 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures