Carrier route record

ASPDX→MSP

Alaska Airlines · Portland to Minneapolis

Flights: 183
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 2

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

Alaska on PDX to MSP earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 30 minutes. That rests on 183 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PDX to MSP record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 142 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 183 completed flights

Avg delay

31 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

90.9%

Every carrier on PDX to MSP, 1,513 flights

These figures cover 183 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on PDX to MSP

Alaska flew 183 of the 1,513 flights on PDX to MSP, about 12% of it. Its 91.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 90.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 91.8% to Delta at 90.8%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on PDX to MSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	183	91.8%	31 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	1,330	90.8%	67 min	0.60%	A+

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

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 183 flights.

5am–8am82 flights89.0%
8am–11am101 flights94.1%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 94.1% on time for the 8am–11am window against 89.0% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 101 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PDX to MSP through the year

Oct–Dec 202576 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202619 flights—
Apr–Jun 202688 flights93.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.8% on time across 183 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on PDX to MSP logged 76 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 19 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 88 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 91.8% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 50% of the 468 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.

Carrier
50%
National Airspace System
46%
Late-arriving aircraft
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, 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 236 of the 468 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 468 reported delay minutes.

46% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 215 minutes out of 468, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.5% 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 1,426 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 85.0% on time across 183 flights, 7 points below 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 183 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.

What to do with this

Booking Alaska on PDX to MSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 183 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 91.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 183 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