Carrier route record
ASPDX→SAN
Alaska Airlines · Portland to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,605
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 91%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on PDX to SAN lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,605 flights, with a median arrival 1 minute early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on PDX to SAN from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,589 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.87%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.9%
Every carrier on PDX to SAN, 1,772 flights
These figures cover 1,605 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on PDX to SAN
Alaska flew 1,605 of the 1,772 flights on PDX to SAN, most of the route. Its 78.9% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 78.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 90.0% to Southwest at 75.9%. Two 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 30 | 90.0% | 68 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,605 | 78.9% | 42 min | 0.87% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 75.9% | 29 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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 1,605 flights.
- 5am–8am318 flights82.2%
- 8am–11am332 flights81.5%
- 11am–2pm22 flights—
- 2pm–5pm356 flights78.8%
- 5pm–8pm357 flights74.9%
- 8pm–5am220 flights77.0%
Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 82.2% on time for the 5am–8am window against 74.9% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 357 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on PDX to SAN through the year
December is the weak month at 67.3% on time, against 90.9% in April. 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 155 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 71.8%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 14,000 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
39% 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 5,484 minutes out of 14,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 13,943 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 82.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.87%, 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 3.3% 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 933 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 85.9% on time across 1,610 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,605 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 SAN
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 90.9% on time and December 67.3%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,589 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to SAN, every carrier
- Alaska on SAN to PDX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on PDX to SAN75.9%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.