Route reliability record
BUR→PDX
Burbank to Portland
- Flights
- 996
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 817 mi
- Carriers
- 3
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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 996 BUR to PDX flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly BUR to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.2% of the time and Tuesday flights 94.3%, against 90.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 133 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 984 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
91.2% on time across 977 flights
These figures cover 996 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 BUR 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 | 977 | 91.2% | 67 min | 1.02% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 34 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 71.4% | 73 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on BUR 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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Burbank to Portland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SNA → PDXSanta Ana to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 91.9% | 93.1% | 1.29% | 8pm–5am, Mon | — |
| 2. BUR → PDXBurbank to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 90.3% | 91.2% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Tue (route) | AS 122 14:21 |
| 3. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 89.2% | 90.0% | 0.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | AS 1315 14:08 |
| 4. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | Delta Air Lines | 85.4% | 86.2% | 0.89% | 11am–2pm, Wed | DL 2975 07:00 |
| 5. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | SkyWest Airlines | 75.9% | 76.2% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 996 flights.
- 5am–8am364 flights94.2%
- 8am–11am5 flights—
- 11am–2pm114 flights88.5%
- 2pm–5pm265 flights88.9%
- 5pm–8pm248 flights89.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 88.5% on time against 94.2% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 13 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.
April is the best month on the calendar at 98.5% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. December was the busiest month here, with 100 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.7%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 5,995 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 5,995 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 5,995 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, 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 2,234 of the 5,995 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.00% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.20%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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.
The 817 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 86.4% on time across 995 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 996 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 PDX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 996 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 90.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUR to PDX questions
How often is BUR to PDX delayed?
Roughly 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 9.1% of the 996 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BUR to PDX compared with the rest of the country?
90.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 BUR to PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 88.5%, 6 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 October delays on BUR to PDX?
October is the weakest month at 85.9% on time, compared with 98.5% in April. Across the year that is 13 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 BUR — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- BUR to LAS, a related route80.8%
- SEA to PDX, a related route83.1%
- BUR to PHX, a related route83.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record91.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record71.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. BUR to PDX and PDX to BUR 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.