Route reliability record
ANC→BET
Anchorage to Bethel
- Flights
- 723
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 399 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B−, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 723 ANC to BET flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly ANC to BET: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 85.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.4%, against 82.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 48 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 697 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.46%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
82.4% on time across 723 flights
These figures cover 723 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ANC to BET
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 723 | 82.4% | 52 min | 3.46% | B− |
Flight by flight
Flights on ANC to BET
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 723 flights.
- 5am–8am16 flights—
- 8am–11am160 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm186 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm361 flights80.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 85.7% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 80.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 361 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
January is the weak month at 64.2% on time, against 90.3% in May. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 77.2%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 6,427 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 11%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
41% 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 6,427 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 6,427 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,608 of the 6,427 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 3.46%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.4% 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 399 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 70.6% on time across 723 flights, 12 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 723 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in BET after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.46% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 50 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 697 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ANC to BET questions
How often is ANC to BET delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.6% of the 723 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is ANC to BET compared with the rest of the country?
82.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B− on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ANC to BET?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 85.7% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.4%, 5 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are January delays on ANC to BET?
January is the weakest month at 64.2% on time, compared with 90.3% in May. Across the year that is 26 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- BET to ANC — the return legseparate record
- ANC to SEA, a related route85.5%
- ANC to FAI, a related route89.0%
- ANC to JNU, a related route86.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record82.4%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ANC to BET and BET to ANC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed ANC to BET’s on-time badge on your site
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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.