Route reliability record
ANC→FAI
Anchorage to Fairbanks
- Flights
- 1,450
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 261 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,450 ANC to FAI flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly ANC to FAI: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.5%, against 88.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,436 completed flights
Avg delay
58 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.90%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
88.6% on time across 1,450 flights
These figures cover 1,450 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on ANC to FAI
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 | 1,450 | 88.6% | 58 min | 0.90% | A+ |
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Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am276 flights94.4%
- 8am–11am522 flights88.2%
- 11am–2pm86 flights87.2%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights84.1%
- 8pm–5am339 flights89.9%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.4% of the time, against 77.9% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 522 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ANC to FAI by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On ANC to FAI, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.4% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 77.9%, a wide gap of 16.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.4%
- 8–11am88.2%
- 11am–2pm87.2%
- 2–5pm77.9%
- 5–8pm84.1%
- 8pm–5am89.9%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 20 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 78.3% on time, against 98.3% in September. 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 178 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 84.5%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 44% of the 9,497 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 9%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,187 of the 9,497 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,497 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 0.90% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.6% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 261 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 86.1% on time across 1,449 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,450 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in FAI after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 98.3% on time and January 78.3%, a swing of 20 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,436 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ANC to FAI questions
How often is ANC to FAI delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.4% of the 1,450 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ANC to FAI compared with the rest of the country?
88.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on ANC to FAI?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.4% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 77.9%, 17 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 FAI?
January is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 98.3% in September. Across the year that is 20 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
- FAI to ANC — the return legseparate record
- ANC to SEA, a related route86.9%
- SEA to FAI, a related route79.0%
- ANC to PDX, a related route90.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record88.6%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. ANC to FAI and FAI to ANC are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.