Flight number record

AS 540

Alaska Airlines · Portland to Austin

Route: PDX → AUS
Departs: 10:47
Flights: 266
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 540, check with Alaska Airlines.

AS 540 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 266 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.

Set against the rest of the country, AS 540's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 264 completed flights

Avg delay

52 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.75%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 266 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 540 flies

AS 540 flies PDX to AUS without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 10:47, used on 36 of 266 flights, with 10:46 (34 flights) and 10:53 (34 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 10:4736 flights13.5%
Departs 10:4634 flights12.8%
Departs 10:5334 flights12.8%

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 10:47 departure sits in the 8am–11am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 84.1%, and AS 540 runs 2 points better at 86.4%. 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 540 next to PDX to AUS

Every carrier on PDX to AUS combined arrived on time 84.4% of the time across 607 flights, so AS 540 is 2 points ahead of it. Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.1%, which this flight beats by 7 points.

AS 540 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AS 540thin sample	266	86.4%	52 min	0.75%	A+
All Alaska Airlines on PDX–AUS	607	84.4%	52 min	0.49%	B+
All carriers on PDX–AUS	607	84.4%	52 min	0.49%	B+
Alaska Airlines, whole network	293,372	79.1%	52 min	1.28%	B

Across the year

AS 540 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AS 540 held fairly steady: 83.7% in Oct–Dec 2025, 87.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Oct–Dec 202587 flights83.7%
Jan–Mar 202688 flights87.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights87.9%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AS 540 did best on Tuesday at 92.3% on time and worst on Friday at 78.4%. Each day rests on about 38 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AS 540 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 44% of the 1,879 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
44%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
24%
Extreme weather
2%

44% 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 827 minutes out of 1,879, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 1,879 delay minutes reported on AS 540.

Cancellations are rare at 0.75%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% 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.

At 1,715 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

Every one of the 266 flights under AS 540 in the data flew PDX to AUS. 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. 266 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 540

For a booking, AS 540 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 86.4% on time and 0.75% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

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