Carrier route record
ASPDX→SFO
Alaska Airlines · Portland to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,383
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- 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 SFO sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about 55 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,383 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 458 at 84.2% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on PDX to SFO runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 56 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,375 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.3%
Every carrier on PDX to SFO, 3,516 flights
These figures cover 1,383 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 SFO
Alaska flew 1,383 of the 3,516 flights on PDX to SFO, about 39% of it. Its 72.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 92.3% to United at 69.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 84.2% of the time; United Airlines manages 69.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,661 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 14 | 92.3% | 23 min | 7.14% | A− |
| SkyWest Airlines | 458 | 84.2% | 71 min | 0.44% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,383 | 72.0% | 55 min | 0.51% | C+ |
| United Airlines | 1,661 | 69.1% | 59 min | 0.30% | C+ |
The spread between SkyWest and United is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on PDX to SFO
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 18 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am315 flights63.9%
- 8am–11am334 flights74.3%
- 11am–2pm23 flights—
- 2pm–5pm256 flights81.6%
- 5pm–8pm363 flights71.4%
- 8pm–5am92 flights70.7%
Scale runs 55% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 2pm–5pm slot at 81.6% on time, ahead of 5am–8am at 63.9%. 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 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 363 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on PDX to SFO through the year
Delays peak in May, when the on-time rate falls to 41.1%. March is the strongest month at 90.9%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 50 points. March was the busiest month here, with 132 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 77.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 67.3%. 10 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. National Airspace System accounts for 61% of the 21,000 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.
- 61%National Airspace System
- 20%Late-arriving aircraft
- 18%Carrier
- 0%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
61% 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 13,000 minutes out of 21,000, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 21,074 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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
6.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 55 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 550 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 80.2% on time across 1,383 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,383 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 SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. March runs 90.9% on time and May 41.1%, a swing of 50 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,375 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to SFO, every carrier
- Alaska on SFO to PDX, the return leg
- SkyWest Airlines on PDX to SFO84.2%
- United Airlines on PDX to SFO69.1%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.