Carrier route record

OOPDX→SFO

SkyWest Airlines · Portland to San Francisco

Flights: 458
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

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

SkyWest on PDX to SFO earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 458 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,383 at 72.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, SkyWest's PDX to SFO record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 66 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

84.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 455 completed flights

Avg delay

71 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.44%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.3%

Every carrier on PDX to SFO, 3,516 flights

These figures cover 458 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

SkyWest against every carrier on PDX to SFO

SkyWest flew 458 of the 3,516 flights on PDX to SFO, about 13% of it. Its 84.2% on time is 12 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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 two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on PDX to SFO
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Frontier Airlinesthin sample	14	92.3%	23 min	7.14%	A−
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	458	84.2%	71 min	0.44%	B+
Alaska Airlines	1,383	72.0%	55 min	0.51%	C+
United Airlines	1,661	69.1%	59 min	0.30%	C+

No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 72.0%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When SkyWest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am228 flights90.4%
8am–11am3 flights—
11am–2pm61 flights67.2%
2pm–5pm77 flights85.5%
5pm–8pm64 flights76.2%
8pm–5am25 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 67.2% on time against 90.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 228 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on PDX to SFO through the year

Jul–Sep 2025197 flights88.3%
Oct–Dec 202539 flights71.1%
Jan–Mar 2026118 flights89.0%
Apr–Jun 2026104 flights75.5%

Scale runs 65% 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 84.2% on time across 458 flights.

SkyWest on PDX to SFO did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 89.0% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 71.1%, a swing of 18 points on roughly 115 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 89.3% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 78.9%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 5,109 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.

National Airspace System
43%
Carrier
28%
Late-arriving aircraft
28%
Extreme weather
1%

43% 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 2,212 minutes out of 5,109, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 5,109 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.44%, 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

5.9% 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 a little over an hour, 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 78.3% on time across 457 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 458 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 SkyWest on PDX to SFO

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 458 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 84.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 455 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