Route reliability record
PDX→LAX
Portland to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 4,287
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 833 mi
- Carriers
- 4
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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 4,287 PDX to LAX flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 1,688 at 90.4% on time.
Best time to fly PDX to LAX: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.2% of the time and Saturday flights 89.8%, against 86.6% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 90.4% on time across 1,688 flights.
Key figures
On time
86.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 4,260 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.61%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
90.4% on time across 1,688 flights
These figures cover 4,287 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 LAX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.4% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 80.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 563 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 1,688 | 90.4% | 91 min | 0.83% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,817 | 85.8% | 45 min | 0.44% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 219 | 81.6% | 57 min | 0.91% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 563 | 80.0% | 112 min | 0.36% | B+ |
Delta leads SkyWest by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on PDX to LAX
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.
- Delta 294706:2992.6% · 365 flights
- Delta 297510:5389.8% · 363 flights
- Delta 276613:2591.1% · 362 flights
- Alaska 27817:3785.6% · 348 flights
- Delta 255117:3788.7% · 347 flights
- Alaska 58107:0089.1% · 307 flights
- Alaska 69510:3085.8% · 304 flights
- SkyWest 629007:0083.3% · 302 flights
- Alaska 71314:5086.1% · 288 flights
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Los Angeles
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. 2 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PDX → SNAPortland to Santa Ana | Alaska Airlines | 90.0% | 90.9% | 0.97% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AS 264 14:48 |
| 2. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 89.6% | 90.4% | 0.83% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | DL 2947 06:29 |
| 3. PDX → BURPortland to Burbank | Alaska Airlines | 86.3% | 87.0% | 0.81% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | AS 559 17:57 |
| 4. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Alaska Airlines | 85.4% | 85.8% | 0.44% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AS 581 07:00 |
| 5. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 79.7% | 80.0% | 0.36% | 11am–2pm, Sat | OO 6290 07:00 |
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 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 4,287 flights.
- 5am–8am996 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am587 flights87.5%
- 11am–2pm693 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm528 flights84.2%
- 5pm–8pm934 flights83.9%
- 8pm–5am549 flights84.5%
Scale runs 75% to 95%.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.2% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 83.9%. 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 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 996 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter PDX to LAX 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 LAX, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 90.2% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 83.9%, a real gap of 6.3 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am88.7%
- 8–11am87.5%
- 11am–2pm90.2%
- 2–5pm84.2%
- 5–8pm83.9%
- 8pm–5am84.5%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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 80.2% on time, against 92.2% in September. 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 380 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.0%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 51% of the 41,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 51%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 41,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 38 to one. The split is drawn from 41,075 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 21,000 of the 41,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.61%, 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 4.2% 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.
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.
The return leg runs 86.8% on time across 4,289 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.
The sample behind these figures is 4,287 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 LAX 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. September runs 92.2% on time and December 80.2%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 4,260 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to LAX questions
How often is PDX to LAX 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 13.4% of the 4,287 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to LAX?
Delta Air Lines leads at 90.4% on time across 1,688 flights. SkyWest Airlines is at the other end on 80.0%, a gap of 10 points. 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 LAX?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 90.2% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 83.9%, 6 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 LAX?
December is the weakest month at 80.2% on time, compared with 92.2% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- LAX to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on PDX to LAX90.4%
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to LAX85.8%
- Frontier Airlines on PDX to LAX81.6%
- SkyWest Airlines on PDX to LAX80.0%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.9%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- PDX to DEN, a related route82.3%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record85.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record81.6%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. PDX to LAX and LAX 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.