Route reliability record
ANC→PDX
Anchorage to Portland
- Flights
- 1,240
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,240 ANC to PDX flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly ANC to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.7% of the time and Thursday flights 92.2%, against 90.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 132 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,240 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
90.5% on time across 1,240 flights
These figures cover 1,240 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 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 | 1,240 | 90.5% | 64 min | 0.00% | 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–8am117 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am330 flights91.5%
- 11am–2pm316 flights90.8%
- 2pm–5pm110 flights79.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am367 flights91.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 95.7% of the time, against 79.1% 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 367 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter ANC to PDX 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 PDX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 79.1%, a wide gap of 16.6 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.7%
- 8–11am91.5%
- 11am–2pm90.8%
- 2–5pm79.1%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am91.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
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. August was the busiest month here, with 124 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
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 7,574 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%Extreme weather
- 8%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 13% 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 7,574 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,718 of the 7,574 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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 8.3% 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 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 83.4% on time across 1,239 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,240 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. 1,240 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 ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.5% of the 1,240 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is ANC to PDX compared with the rest of the country?
90.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 13 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 95.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 79.1%, 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 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 route86.9%
- SEA to PDX, a related route82.2%
- ANC to FAI, a related route88.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record90.5%
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.