Flight number record

AS 9

Alaska Airlines · Washington to Portland

Route: DCA → PDX
Departs: 17:43
Flights: 364
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 364 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so AS 9 runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 82 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights

Avg delay

69 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

10.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 364 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Schedule

When AS 9 flies

AS 9 flies DCA to PDX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 17:43, used on 50 of 364 flights, with 17:49 (45 flights) and 17:06 (44 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 17:4350 flights13.7%
Departs 17:4945 flights12.4%
Departs 17:0644 flights12.1%

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 17:43 departure sits in the 5pm–8pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 68.2%, 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.

Against the route

AS 9 next to DCA to PDX

Across its whole network Alaska Airlines managed 79.1%, which this flight trails by 10 points.

AS 9 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AS 9thin sample	364	69.4%	69 min	0.82%	C+
All Alaska Airlines on DCA–PDXthin sample	364	69.4%	69 min	0.82%	C+
All carriers on DCA–PDXthin sample	364	69.4%	69 min	0.82%	C+
Alaska Airlines, whole network	293,372	79.1%	52 min	1.28%	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 Oct–Dec 2025 at 63.7%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 91 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 202592 flights65.6%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights63.7%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights64.8%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.3%

Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AS 9 did best on Saturday at 82.7% on time and worst on Thursday at 63.3%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 19 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AS 9 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 7,613 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
National Airspace System
28%
Carrier
21%
Extreme weather
8%

43% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,613 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,613 delay minutes reported on AS 9.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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 364 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. 364 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 0.82% cancelled over 364 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular 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