Carrier route record
ASPHX→PDX
Alaska Airlines · Phoenix to Portland
- Flights
- 1,372
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 37%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on PHX to PDX 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,372 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, American Airlines, flew 871 at 75.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PHX to PDX record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 103 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,367 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
78.7%
Every carrier on PHX to PDX, 3,731 flights
These figures cover 1,372 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 PHX to PDX
Alaska flew 1,372 of the 3,731 flights on PHX to PDX, about 37% of it. Its 87.9% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Frontier at 90.5% to Southwest at 69.5%. Three of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. American Airlines arrives on time 75.9% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 69.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,273 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 95 | 90.5% | 87 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,372 | 87.9% | 57 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 83.5% | 61 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 35 | 82.9% | 67 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 871 | 75.9% | 64 min | 0.46% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,273 | 69.5% | 47 min | 0.47% | C+ |
American leads Southwest by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on PHX to PDX
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 1,372 flights.
- 5am–8am355 flights90.4%
- 8am–11am141 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm218 flights86.6%
- 2pm–5pm197 flights89.3%
- 5pm–8pm360 flights86.3%
- 8pm–5am101 flights84.2%
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 84.2% for 8pm–5am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 360 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on PHX to PDX through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 94.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 176 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 84.0%. 6 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 9,472 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
53% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 9,472 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 9,472 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 are rare at 0.29%, 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 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 1,010 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 83.8% on time across 1,375 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,372 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 PHX to PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.9% on time and November 76.7%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of November before you think about anything else. 1,367 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to PDX, every carrier
- Alaska on PDX to PHX, the return leg
- American Airlines on PHX to PDX75.9%
- Southwest Airlines on PHX to PDX69.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) 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.