Route reliability record
GEG→PDX
Spokane to Portland
- Flights
- 1,068
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 279 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,068 GEG to PDX flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 605 at 90.3% on time.
Best time to fly GEG to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.7% of the time and Saturday flights 87.7%, against 84.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,059 completed flights
Avg delay
61 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
90.3% on time across 605 flights
These figures cover 1,068 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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 GEG to PDX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 90.3% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 77.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 463 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 605 | 90.3% | 58 min | 1.16% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 463 | 77.0% | 62 min | 0.43% | B+ |
The spread between Alaska and SkyWest is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on GEG 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.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Spokane to Portland
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. GEG → PDXSpokane to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 89.3% | 90.3% | 1.16% | 5am–8am, Sun | AS 710 05:00 |
| 2. GEG → PDXSpokane to Portland | SkyWest Airlines | 76.7% | 77.0% | 0.43% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am301 flights95.7%
- 8am–11am113 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm305 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm312 flights72.3%
- 5pm–8pm37 flights86.5%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% 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 72.3% for the afternoon window. That is 23 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 312 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter GEG 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 GEG to PDX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 95.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 72.3%, a wide gap of 23.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am95.7%
- 8–11am89.3%
- 11am–2pm84.0%
- 2–5pm72.3%
- 5–8pm86.5%
- 8pm–5am—
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 24 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.
August is the worst month at 73.9% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 97.7%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 7 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 9,933 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 2%Extreme weather
44% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,933 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 9,933 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.7% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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 actually costs
5.2% 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 279 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 84.7% on time across 1,069 flights, within half a point 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. 1,068 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. 1,068 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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,059 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
GEG to PDX questions
How often is GEG to PDX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.5% of the 1,068 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on GEG to PDX?
Alaska Airlines leads at 90.3% on time across 605 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 77.0%, a gap of 13 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on GEG to PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 72.3%, 23 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 August delays on GEG to PDX?
August is the weakest month at 73.9% on time, compared with 97.7% in April. Across the year that is 24 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 GEG — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on GEG to PDX90.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on GEG to PDX77.0%
- GEG to SEA, a related route85.7%
- SEA to PDX, a related route82.2%
- GEG to DEN, a related route84.2%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record90.3%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record77.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. GEG to PDX and PDX to GEG 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.