Route reliability record
PDX→BUR
Portland to Burbank
- Flights
- 995
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 817 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 995 PDX to BUR flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly PDX to BUR: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Saturday flights 92.4%, against 86.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 984 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
86.9% on time across 976 flights
These figures cover 995 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to BUR
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 | 976 | 86.9% | 52 min | 1.02% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 39 min | 0.00% | D+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 57.1% | 64 min | 0.00% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on PDX to BUR
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.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Burbank
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 90.1% | 90.9% | 0.89% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | DL 2947 06:15 |
| 2. PDX → SNAPortland to Santa Ana | Alaska Airlines | 89.7% | 90.8% | 1.23% | 8pm–5am, Sat | — |
| 3. PDX → BURPortland to Burbank | Alaska Airlines | 86.0% | 86.9% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | AS 121 10:53 |
| 4. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Alaska Airlines | 85.8% | 86.5% | 0.84% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AS 278 17:40 |
| 5. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 80.7% | 81.0% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6290 06:00 |
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 16 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–8am90 flights92.0%
- 8am–11am145 flights83.9%
- 11am–2pm144 flights76.2%
- 2pm–5pm273 flights88.8%
- 5pm–8pm343 flights88.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 76.2% on time against 92.0% 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 343 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 76.8% on time, against 93.0% in November. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 100 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 43% of the 6,995 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.
- 43%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
40% 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 6,995 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 6,995 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 43%, 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 3,034 of the 6,995 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.10%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 817 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 996 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. 995 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 BUR after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 995 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 86.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 984 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to BUR questions
How often is PDX to BUR delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.6% of the 995 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is PDX to BUR compared with the rest of the country?
86.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to BUR?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 76.2%, 16 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 BUR?
December is the weakest month at 76.8% on time, compared with 93.0% in November. Across the year that is 16 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
- BUR to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.8%
- LAS to BUR, a related route79.8%
- PDX to LAX, a related route87.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record86.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record60.0%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record57.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. PDX to BUR and BUR 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.