Route reliability record
FAI→ANC
Fairbanks to Anchorage
- Flights
- 1,449
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 261 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,449 FAI to ANC flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly FAI to ANC: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Sunday flights 90.0%, against 86.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,433 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.04%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
86.1% on time across 1,449 flights
These figures cover 1,449 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 FAI to ANC
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 | 1,449 | 86.1% | 68 min | 1.04% | 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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am328 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am298 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm366 flights77.5%
- 2pm–5pm240 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm44 flights84.1%
- 8pm–5am173 flights86.7%
Scale runs 70% to 100%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.5% on time against 93.8% for 8am–11am. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 366 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter FAI to ANC 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 FAI to ANC, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 93.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 77.5%, a wide gap of 16.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am89.2%
- 8–11am93.8%
- 11am–2pm77.5%
- 2–5pm85.4%
- 5–8pm84.1%
- 8pm–5am86.7%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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.
December is the weak month at 65.1% on time, against 96.6% 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, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.0% on time and Monday the weakest at 83.8%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 14,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 11%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
60% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 13,594 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.04% 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 4.4% 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 88.6% on time across 1,450 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 1,449 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 ANC 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 96.6% on time and December 65.1%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,433 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
FAI to ANC questions
How often is FAI to ANC delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.9% of the 1,449 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is FAI to ANC compared with the rest of the country?
86.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on FAI to ANC?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 93.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 77.5%, 16 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 December delays on FAI to ANC?
December is the weakest month at 65.1% on time, compared with 96.6% in September. Across the year that is 32 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
- ANC to FAI — the return legseparate record
- FAI to SEA, a related route82.1%
- SEA to ANC, a related route76.5%
- PDX to ANC, a related route83.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record86.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. FAI to ANC and ANC to FAI 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.