Route reliability record
SAN→PDX
San Diego to Portland
- Flights
- 1,777
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 933 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 about 50 minutes. That rests on 1,777 SAN to PDX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAN to PDX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 91.0%, against 84.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 65 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,758 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.07%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
85.9% on time across 1,610 flights
These figures cover 1,777 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 SAN to PDX
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 | 86.7% | 69 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,610 | 85.9% | 54 min | 1.18% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 63.5% | 36 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 14 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–8am322 flights92.8%
- 8am–11am125 flights89.4%
- 11am–2pm286 flights85.6%
- 2pm–5pm455 flights81.0%
- 5pm–8pm373 flights78.5%
- 8pm–5am216 flights82.5%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.8% of the time, against 78.5% for the evening window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 455 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 24 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.
June is the worst month at 67.8% on time, 24 points below April, the best at 91.4%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 172 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.5%. 12 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 14,000 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.
- 58%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
58% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 46 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 14,160 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 92.8% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.07% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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 78.9% on time across 1,772 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,777 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 PDX 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. April runs 91.4% on time and June 67.8%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,758 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to PDX questions
How often is SAN to PDX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.9% of the 1,777 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SAN to PDX compared with the rest of the country?
84.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAN to PDX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 78.5%, 14 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 June delays on SAN to PDX?
June is the weakest month at 67.8% on time, compared with 91.4% in April. Across the year that is 24 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
- PDX to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to PDX85.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to PDX63.5%
- SAN to SFO, a related route65.0%
- SEA to PDX, a related route83.1%
- SAN to DEN, a related route79.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record86.7%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record85.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record63.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SAN to PDX and PDX to SAN 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.