Carrier route record

ASMSP→PDX

Alaska Airlines · Minneapolis to Portland

Flights: 183
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on MSP 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 183 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's MSP to PDX record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 180 completed flights

Avg delay

64 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.64%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.6%

Every carrier on MSP to PDX, 1,512 flights

These figures cover 183 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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

Alaska against every carrier on MSP to PDX

Alaska flew 183 of the 1,512 flights on MSP to PDX, about 12% of it. Its 85.0% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 85.0% to Delta at 81.1%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on MSP to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	183	85.0%	64 min	1.64%	A
Delta Air Lines	1,329	81.1%	52 min	0.45%	B+

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm82 flights72.5%
2pm–5pm52 flights94.2%
5pm–8pm49 flights95.8%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% 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 72.5% on time against 95.8% for 5pm–8pm. 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 82 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on MSP to PDX through the year

Oct–Dec 202576 flights75.7%
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 202688 flights95.4%

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 85.0% on time across 183 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on MSP to PDX logged 76 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 19 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 88 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 85.0% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,719 reported delay minutes.

Late-arriving aircraft
41%
National Airspace System
29%
Carrier
22%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
2%

41% 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 1,719 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 1,719 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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 1,426 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 91.8% on time across 183 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 183 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 Alaska on MSP to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 183 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 85.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 180 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures