Route reliability record
PDX→ANC
Portland to Anchorage
- Flights
- 1,239
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,542 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That rests on 1,239 PDX to ANC flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly PDX to ANC: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Monday flights 87.0%, against 83.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,237 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
83.4% on time across 1,239 flights
These figures cover 1,239 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 PDX 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 | 1,239 | 83.4% | 48 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PDX to ANC
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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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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am145 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am292 flights79.5%
- 11am–2pm68 flights77.9%
- 2pm–5pm326 flights81.2%
- 5pm–8pm293 flights86.3%
- 8pm–5am115 flights87.0%
Scale runs 70% to 95%.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 77.9% on time against 90.3% for 5am–8am. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 326 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PDX 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 PDX to ANC, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 90.3% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 77.9%, a wide gap of 12.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am90.3%
- 8–11am79.5%
- 11am–2pm77.9%
- 2–5pm81.2%
- 5–8pm86.3%
- 8pm–5am87.0%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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 60.4% on time, against 90.3% in April. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 79.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 9,747 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 9,747 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 16 to one. The split is drawn from 9,747 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,460 of the 9,747 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% 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 1,542 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 90.5% on time across 1,240 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,239 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. April runs 90.3% on time and December 60.4%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,237 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to ANC questions
How often is PDX to ANC 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 16.6% of the 1,239 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is PDX to ANC compared with the rest of the country?
83.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to ANC?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 77.9%, 12 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 PDX to ANC?
December is the weakest month at 60.4% on time, compared with 90.3% in April. Across the year that is 30 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 PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.9%
- SEA to ANC, a related route76.5%
- PDX to LAX, a related route86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record83.4%
- 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. PDX to ANC and ANC to PDX 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.