Carrier route record
DLLAX→PDX
Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Portland
- Flights
- 1,690
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 38%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LAX to PDX 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,690 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,899 at 90.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LAX to PDX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 86 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,674 completed flights
Avg delay
74 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.89%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.4%
Every carrier on LAX to PDX, 4,406 flights
These figures cover 1,690 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
Delta against every carrier on LAX to PDX
Delta flew 1,690 of the 4,406 flights on LAX to PDX, about 38% of it. Its 86.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 86.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 90.0% to SkyWest at 76.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 90.0% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 76.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 599 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,899 | 90.0% | 51 min | 0.90% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 1,690 | 86.2% | 74 min | 0.89% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 85.1% | 49 min | 1.38% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 599 | 76.2% | 87 min | 0.33% | B+ |
The spread between Alaska and SkyWest is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LAX to PDX
Departure window
When Delta 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 1,690 flights.
- 5am–8am347 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am364 flights88.1%
- 11am–2pm193 flights89.6%
- 2pm–5pm365 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm158 flights84.2%
- 8pm–5am263 flights79.8%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 89.6% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 79.8%. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LAX to PDX through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 149 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.5%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 77% of the 17,000 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.
- 77%Carrier
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 77%, 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 13,000 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,019 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.89%, below the national 1.81% 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
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 833 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 90.9% on time across 1,689 flights, 5 points above 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,690 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.
What to do with this
Booking Delta on LAX to PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.2% on time and November 80.0%, a swing of 14 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,674 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to PDX, every carrier
- Delta on PDX to LAX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on LAX to PDX90.0%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to PDX85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on LAX to PDX76.2%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.