Flight number record

AS 526

Alaska Airlines · Portland to San Francisco

Route: PDX → SFO
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 293
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 526, check with Alaska Airlines.

AS 526 draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is roughly 55 minutes behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 293 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AS 526 runs 14 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 140 extra late arrivals.

On time

63.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 291 completed flights

Avg delay

54 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.68%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

5.2%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 293 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Schedule

When AS 526 flies

AS 526 flies PDX to SFO without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 76 of 293 flights, with 07:04 (66 flights) and 07:05 (64 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:0076 flights25.9%
Departs 07:0466 flights22.5%
Departs 07:0564 flights21.8%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AS 526 runs 26 points worse at 63.6%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AS 526 next to PDX to SFO

Every carrier on PDX to SFO combined arrived on time 72.3% of the time across 3,516 flights, so AS 526 is 9 points behind it. Alaska flew 1,383 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 72.0% on time. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.1%, which this flight trails by 15 points.

AS 526 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AS 526thin sample	293	63.6%	54 min	0.68%	D+
All Alaska Airlines on PDX–SFO	1,383	72.0%	55 min	0.51%	C+
All carriers on PDX–SFO	3,516	72.3%	58 min	0.43%	C+
Alaska Airlines, whole network	293,372	79.1%	52 min	1.28%	B

Across the year

AS 526 quarter by quarter

AS 526 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.4% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 33.0%, a swing of 52 points on roughly 73 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 202550 flights68.8%
Oct–Dec 202563 flights73.0%
Jan–Mar 202689 flights85.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights33.0%

Scale runs 25% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AS 526 did best on Wednesday at 68.3% on time and worst on Thursday at 52.5%. Each day rests on about 42 flights, so a gap of 16 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AS 526 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 78% of the 5,716 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
78%
Carrier
21%
Late-arriving aircraft
0%
Extreme weather
0%

78% 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 4,453 minutes out of 5,716, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,716 delay minutes reported on AS 526.

Cancellations are rare at 0.68%, 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.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

5.2% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

The 550 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.

Every one of the 293 flights under AS 526 in the data flew PDX to SFO. 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. 293 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 526

For a booking, AS 526 is one of the weaker ways to fly PDX to SFO: 9 points below the route as a whole. If the schedule allows, compare it with the other departures listed on the route page before settling on this one.

Where to go next

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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures