Route reliability record
ANC→PDX
Anchorage to Portland
- Flights
- 1,179
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,542 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,179 ANC to PDX flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly ANC to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 92.7%, against 91.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 135 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,179 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
91.1% on time across 1,179 flights
These figures cover 1,179 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 PDX
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 | 1,179 | 91.1% | 70 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on ANC to PDX
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 1,179 flights.
- 5am–8am179 flights95.0%
- 8am–11am330 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm254 flights90.9%
- 2pm–5pm49 flights87.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am367 flights90.5%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 95.0% on time for the 5am–8am window against 87.8% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 367 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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 81.2% on time, against 98.9% in April. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
The day of the week is close to irrelevant here: 3 points separates the best day from the worst. Weekly demand peaks are not what drives the delays on this operation.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 53% of the 7,330 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.
- 53%Carrier
- 23%Late-arriving aircraft
- 14%Extreme weather
- 10%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,330 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 53%, 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 3,869 of the 7,330 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% 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 1,542 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 81.3% on time across 1,179 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,179 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 PDX 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. April runs 98.9% on time and January 81.2%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of January before you think about anything else. 1,179 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
ANC to PDX questions
How often is ANC to PDX delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.9% of the 1,179 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is ANC to PDX compared with the rest of the country?
91.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 14 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 PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 87.8%, 7 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 PDX?
January is the weakest month at 81.2% on time, compared with 98.9% in April. Across the year that is 18 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
- PDX to ANC — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- ANC to SEA, a related route85.5%
- SEA to PDX, a related route83.1%
- ANC to FAI, a related route89.0%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record91.1%
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
Direction matters. ANC to PDX and PDX 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.