Flight number record
AS 9
Alaska Airlines · Washington to Portland
- Route
- DCA → PDX
- Departs
- 17:16
- Flights
- 363
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AS 9, check with Alaska Airlines.
AS 9 sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so AS 9 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 79 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
69.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.55%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
9.7%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 363 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Schedule
When AS 9 flies
AS 9 flies DCA to PDX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:16, used on 69 of 363 flights, with 17:06 (44 flights) next.
- Departs 17:1669 flights19.0%
- Departs 17:0644 flights12.1%
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 17:16 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.0%, and AS 9 runs level with that at 69.4%. By that time of day most aircraft have flown several legs already, and whatever went wrong earlier is still in the schedule.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Against the route
AS 9 next to DCA to PDX
Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.7%, which this flight trails by 10 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS 9thin sample | 363 | 69.4% | 63 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| All Alaska Airlines on DCA–PDXthin sample | 363 | 69.4% | 63 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| All carriers on DCA–PDXthin sample | 363 | 69.4% | 63 min | 0.55% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlines, whole network | 309,844 | 79.7% | 52 min | 1.20% | B |
Across the year
AS 9 quarter by quarter
AS 9 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 83.3% on time and its weakest Jul–Sep 2026 at 63.3%, a swing of 20 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 202530 flights70.0%
- Oct–Dec 202591 flights63.7%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights64.8%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.3%
- Jul–Sep 202661 flights63.3%
Scale runs 55% to 90%.
By weekday, AS 9 did best on Saturday at 82.4% on time and worst on Sunday at 60.8%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 22 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late AS 9 runs when it is late
AS 9 often beats the schedule: 96 of 359 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 110 late arrivals split 41 under half an hour, 34 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 35 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early96 flights26.7%
- Within 15 min153 flights42.6%
- 15–29 min late41 flights11.4%
- 30–59 min late34 flights9.5%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights6.1%
- 2+ hours late13 flights3.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
23 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 24% of them. In the other direction, 38 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at PDX.
The worst days
Worst days for AS 9
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 5 hours 51 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The five worst days are spread across July, March, August and February, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 July 2026 | 5 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 March 2026 | 5 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 August 2026 | 4 hours 37 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 8 February 2026 | 4 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 February 2026 | 3 hours 31 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why AS 9 runs late
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,975 reported delay minutes.
- 35%National Airspace System
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
35% 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 2,417 minutes out of 6,975, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 6,975 delay minutes reported on AS 9.
Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
9.7% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,350 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 363 flights under AS 9 in the data flew DCA to PDX. 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. 363 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 9
For a booking, read AS 9 as 69.4% on time with 0.55% cancelled over 363 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.
Related
Where to go next
- Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.