Route reliability record
PDX→GEG
Portland to Spokane
- Flights
- 1,069
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 279 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B+. 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 40 minutes. That rests on 1,069 PDX to GEG flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 605 at 85.1% on time.
Best time to fly PDX to GEG: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 87.2% of the time and Saturday flights 88.9%, against 84.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,060 completed flights
Avg delay
41 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Alaska
85.1% on time across 605 flights
These figures cover 1,069 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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 GEG
The two carriers here are closely matched: about a point 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 | 605 | 85.1% | 38 min | 1.32% | A |
| SkyWest Airlines | 464 | 84.2% | 45 min | 0.22% | B+ |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 85.1%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Spokane
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PDX → GEGPortland to Spokane | SkyWest Airlines | 84.0% | 84.2% | 0.22% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 2. PDX → GEGPortland to Spokane | Alaska Airlines | 84.0% | 85.1% | 1.32% | 8pm–5am, Mon | — |
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 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 1,069 flights.
- 5am–8am87 flights86.0%
- 8am–11am318 flights84.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm257 flights87.2%
- 5pm–8pm112 flights77.7%
- 8pm–5am295 flights85.2%
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 2pm–5pm slot at 87.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 77.7%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 318 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PDX to GEG 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 GEG, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 87.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 77.7%, a real gap of 9.5 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am86.0%
- 8–11am84.4%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm87.2%
- 5–8pm77.7%
- 8pm–5am85.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 18 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.
August is the worst month at 75.7% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 93.2%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 88.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 48% of the 6,639 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
48% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,639 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 6,639 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.6% 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 279 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 84.5% on time across 1,068 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,069 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 GEG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,069 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 84.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,060 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to GEG questions
How often is PDX to GEG 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 15.3% of the 1,069 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 40 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to GEG?
Alaska Airlines leads at 85.1% on time across 605 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 84.2%, a gap of about a point. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to GEG?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 87.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 77.7%, 10 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 August delays on PDX to GEG?
August is the weakest month at 75.7% on time, compared with 93.2% in April. Across the year that is 18 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
- GEG to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to GEG85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on PDX to GEG84.2%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.9%
- SEA to GEG, a related route83.1%
- PDX to LAX, a related route86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record85.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record84.2%
- 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 GEG and GEG 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.