Carrier route record

ASATL→PDX

Alaska Airlines · Atlanta to Portland

Flights: 286
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on ATL to PDX lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 286 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's ATL to PDX record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 284 completed flights

Avg delay

66 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.70%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

78.4%

Every carrier on ATL to PDX, 1,545 flights

These figures cover 286 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.

Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on ATL to PDX

Alaska flew 286 of the 1,545 flights on ATL to PDX, about 19% of it. Its 82.4% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 100.0% to Delta at 77.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on ATL to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	1	100.0%	—	0.00%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	286	82.4%	66 min	0.70%	B+
Delta Air Lines	1,257	77.5%	48 min	0.95%	B+

Flight by flight

Alaska flight numbers on ATL to PDX

AS 78318:0082.4% · 286 flights

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

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 286 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm30 flights90.0%
5pm–8pm256 flights81.5%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 90.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 81.5%. 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 256 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on ATL to PDX through the year

Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
Oct–Dec 202591 flights76.9%
Jan–Mar 202618 flights—
Apr–Jun 202685 flights84.5%
Jul–Sep 202662 flights78.7%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 82.4% on time across 286 flights.

Alaska on ATL to PDX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.3% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.9%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 72 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.

Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.2%, a spread of 17 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Alaska on ATL to PDX runs when it is late

Alaska on ATL to PDX often beats the schedule: 110 of 284 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 50 late arrivals split 19 under half an hour, 10 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.

15+ min early110 flights38.7%
Within 15 min124 flights43.7%
15–29 min late19 flights6.7%
30–59 min late10 flights3.5%
1–2 hours late10 flights3.5%
2+ hours late11 flights3.9%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 284 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 72 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 31 still arrived on time. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.

The worst days

Worst days for Alaska on ATL to PDX

The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 3 hours 51 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.

The latest arrivals of Alaska on ATL to PDX in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
3 January 2026	3 hours 51 minutes	Carrier
7 June 2026	3 hours 4 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
24 May 2026	3 hours	Late-arriving aircraft
5 December 2025	2 hours 51 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
10 June 2026	2 hours 9 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 57% of the 3,278 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Late-arriving aircraft
57%
National Airspace System
19%
Carrier
16%
Security
4%
Extreme weather
4%

57% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,278 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 3,278 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.70%, below the national 1.89% 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 stage length

What a delay here costs

7.4% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,172 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 runs 80.2% on time across 286 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 286 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 Alaska on ATL to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 286 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 82.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 284 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures