Carrier route record

ASPDX→PSP

Alaska Airlines · Portland to Palm Springs

Flights: 508
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 69%
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 PSP 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 508 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PDX to PSP record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 105 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

88.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 497 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.98%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.8%

Every carrier on PDX to PSP, 738 flights

These figures cover 508 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on PDX to PSP

Alaska flew 508 of the 738 flights on PDX to PSP, most of the route. Its 88.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 88.1% to SkyWest at 74.2%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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 PSP
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)	508	88.1%	43 min	0.98%	A+
SkyWest Airlinesthin sample	230	74.2%	49 min	2.17%	C

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 508 flights.

5am–8am120 flights90.4%
8am–11am117 flights85.3%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm139 flights89.9%
5pm–8pm125 flights87.1%
8pm–5am7 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.4% on time for the 5am–8am window against 85.3% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 139 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PDX to PSP through the year

Oct–Dec 2025138 flights83.1%
Jan–Mar 2026266 flights91.1%
Apr–Jun 2026104 flights87.4%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 88.1% on time across 508 flights.

Quarter by quarter Alaska on PDX to PSP held fairly steady: 83.1% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 87.4% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 96.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.3%. 13 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. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 2,514 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
51%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, 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 1,273 of the 2,514 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,514 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 90.4% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.18%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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 873 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 93.8% on time across 508 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 508 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 PSP

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 508 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 88.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 497 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