Carrier route record
OOLAX→PDX
SkyWest Airlines · Los Angeles to Portland
- Flights
- 599
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 14%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.
SkyWest on LAX to PDX lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 599 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,899 at 90.0% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate SkyWest on LAX to PDX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 597 completed flights
Avg delay
87 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.33%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.4%
Every carrier on LAX to PDX, 4,406 flights
These figures cover 599 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
SkyWest against every carrier on LAX to PDX
SkyWest flew 599 of the 4,406 flights on LAX to PDX, about 14% of it. Its 76.2% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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 two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,899 | 90.0% | 51 min | 0.90% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,690 | 86.2% | 74 min | 0.89% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 85.1% | 49 min | 1.38% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines (this page) | 599 | 76.2% | 87 min | 0.33% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 90.0%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Departure window
When SkyWest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am30 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm130 flights83.8%
- 2pm–5pm143 flights79.7%
- 5pm–8pm201 flights66.5%
- 8pm–5am95 flights76.6%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.0% of the time, against 66.5% for the evening window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 201 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
SkyWest on LAX to PDX through the year
August is the worst month at 57.6% on time, 27 points below September, the best at 85.1%. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 59 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 66.3%. 17 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why SkyWest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 60% of the 12,000 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.
- 60%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 60%, 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 7,410 of the 12,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 12,333 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 90.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.33%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 11.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 81.0% on time across 599 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 599 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 SkyWest on LAX to PDX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 599 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 76.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 597 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to PDX, every carrier
- SkyWest on PDX to LAX, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on LAX to PDX90.0%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to PDX86.2%
- Frontier Airlines on LAX to PDX85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.