Carrier route record

ASPDX→LAX

Alaska Airlines · Portland to Los Angeles

Flights: 1,897
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 4

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

Alaska on PDX to LAX 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 about 50 minutes. That rests on 1,897 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,689 at 90.9% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PDX to LAX record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,881 completed flights

Avg delay

49 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.84%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

87.4%

Every carrier on PDX to LAX, 4,403 flights

These figures cover 1,897 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

Alaska against every carrier on PDX to LAX

Alaska flew 1,897 of the 4,403 flights on PDX to LAX, about 43% of it. Its 86.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 87.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 90.9% to SkyWest at 81.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 90.9% of the time; SkyWest Airlines manages 81.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 599 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on PDX to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	1,689	90.9%	108 min	0.89%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	1,897	86.5%	49 min	0.84%	A+
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	218	84.9%	52 min	2.75%	B
SkyWest Airlines	599	81.0%	117 min	0.33%	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

Alaska flight numbers on PDX to LAX

AS 27817:4089.2% · 344 flights

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 14 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am360 flights89.5%
8am–11am323 flights84.4%
11am–2pm148 flights95.1%
2pm–5pm365 flights84.6%
5pm–8pm387 flights88.3%
8pm–5am314 flights81.1%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 95.1% on time, ahead of 8pm–5am at 81.1%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 387 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PDX to LAX through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.September best, December worst

December is the weak month at 75.0% on time, against 93.4% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 192 flights.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.9%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 44% of the 13,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
44%
Carrier
41%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
0%

44% 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 13,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 44 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 12,520 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 5,078 of the 13,000 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.7% 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 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. 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 90.0% on time across 1,899 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 1,897 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.

What to do with this

Booking Alaska on PDX to LAX

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 93.4% on time and December 75.0%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,881 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