Route reliability record
PDX→SNA
Portland to Santa Ana
- Flights
- 1,546
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 859 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 35 minutes. That rests on 1,546 PDX to SNA flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly PDX to SNA: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Saturday. Flights in that window arrived on time 96.8% of the time and Saturday flights 93.2%, against 90.8% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 132 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,526 completed flights
Avg delay
35 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.23%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
90.8% on time across 1,546 flights
These figures cover 1,546 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to SNA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,546 | 90.8% | 35 min | 1.23% | A |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Santa Ana
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 90.1% | 90.9% | 0.89% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | DL 2947 06:15 |
| 2. PDX → SNAPortland to Santa Ana | Alaska Airlines | 89.7% | 90.8% | 1.23% | 8pm–5am, Sat | — |
| 3. PDX → BURPortland to Burbank | Alaska Airlines | 86.0% | 86.9% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Sat (route) | AS 121 10:53 |
| 4. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | Alaska Airlines | 85.8% | 86.5% | 0.84% | 11am–2pm, Sat | AS 278 17:40 |
| 5. PDX → LAXPortland to Los Angeles | SkyWest Airlines | 80.7% | 81.0% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Wed | OO 6290 06:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 11 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am364 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am385 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm21 flights—
- 2pm–5pm351 flights93.4%
- 5pm–8pm267 flights92.0%
- 8pm–5am158 flights96.8%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 96.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 11 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 82.8% on time, against 99.2% in June. 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 149 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 87.9%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 45% of the 4,927 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.
- 45%Carrier
- 39%National Airspace System
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Extreme weather
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 1,907 minutes out of 4,927, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 4,927 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, 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 2,195 of the 4,927 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.23% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.9% 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 859 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 runs 93.1% on time across 1,546 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,546 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SNA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 99.2% on time and December 82.8%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,526 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to SNA questions
How often is PDX to SNA delayed?
Roughly one flight in ten arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.2% of the 1,546 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 35 minutes on average.
How reliable is PDX to SNA compared with the rest of the country?
90.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to SNA?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 96.8% on time. The 5am–8am window is the weakest at 85.8%, 11 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on PDX to SNA?
December is the weakest month at 82.8% on time, compared with 99.2% in June. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- SNA to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.8%
- SFO to SNA, a related route80.3%
- PDX to LAX, a related route87.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record90.8%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. PDX to SNA and SNA to PDX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.