Flight number record
AS 278
Alaska Airlines · Portland to Los Angeles
- Route
- PDX → LAX
- Departs
- 17:37
- Flights
- 348
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 278, check with Alaska Airlines.
AS 278 earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 348 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AS 278's record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 348 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 348 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
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Schedule
When AS 278 flies
AS 278 flies PDX to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:37, used on 69 of 348 flights, with 17:49 (47 flights) next.
- Departs 17:3769 flights19.8%
- Departs 17:4947 flights13.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 17:37 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AS 278 runs 18 points better at 85.6%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
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Against the route
AS 278 next to PDX to LAX
Every carrier on PDX to LAX combined arrived on time 86.6% of the time across 4,287 flights, so AS 278 is about level with it. Alaska flew 1,817 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.8% on time. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.7%, which this flight beats by 6 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS 278thin sample | 348 | 85.6% | 56 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| All Alaska Airlines on PDX–LAX | 1,817 | 85.8% | 45 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| All carriers on PDX–LAX | 4,287 | 86.6% | 72 min | 0.61% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines, whole network | 309,844 | 79.7% | 52 min | 1.20% | B |
Across the year
AS 278 quarter by quarter
AS 278 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 90.0% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 71.2%, a swing of 19 points on roughly 70 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights90.0%
- Oct–Dec 202589 flights86.5%
- Jan–Mar 202685 flights89.4%
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights89.4%
- Jul–Sep 202659 flights71.2%
Scale runs 65% to 95%.
By weekday, AS 278 did best on Tuesday at 94.2% on time and worst on Thursday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 50 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AS 278 runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 28 of the 50 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 13 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early81 flights23.3%
- Within 15 min217 flights62.4%
- 15–29 min late28 flights8.0%
- 30–59 min late9 flights2.6%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late7 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 348 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 57 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 25% of them. 7 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AS 278
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 4 hours 29 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 September 2025 | 3 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 August 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 October 2025 | 3 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 January 2026 | 2 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why AS 278 runs late
Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,784 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 58%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,612 of the 2,784 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,784 delay minutes reported on AS 278.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.7% 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.
The 833 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
Every one of the 348 flights under AS 278 in the data flew PDX to LAX. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 348 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking AS 278
For a booking, AS 278 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 85.6% on time and 0.00% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to PDX, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 2947 on the same route92.6%
- Delta Air Lines 2975 on the same route89.8%
- Delta Air Lines 2766 on the same route91.1%
- Delta Air Lines 2551 on the same route88.7%
- Alaska Airlines 581 on the same route89.1%
- Alaska Airlines 695 on the same route85.8%
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on-time record
- Every Alaska Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
A flight number here means Alaska Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.