Carrier route record
ASSAN→PDX
Alaska Airlines · San Diego to Portland
- Flights
- 1,610
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 91%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SAN to PDX earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 1,610 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SAN to PDX record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 83 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,591 completed flights
Avg delay
54 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.18%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.1%
Every carrier on SAN to PDX, 1,777 flights
These figures cover 1,610 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 SAN to PDX
Alaska flew 1,610 of the 1,777 flights on SAN to PDX, most of the route. Its 85.9% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from SkyWest at 86.7% to Southwest at 63.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 1,610 | 85.9% | 54 min | 1.18% | A |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 137 | 63.5% | 36 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 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–11am93 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm225 flights87.9%
- 2pm–5pm387 flights86.5%
- 5pm–8pm368 flights78.8%
- 8pm–5am215 flights82.9%
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 78.8% 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 387 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SAN to PDX through the year
June is the worst month at 76.3% on time, 18 points below April, the best at 94.7%. 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. December was the busiest month here, with 154 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.0%. 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 58% of the 12,000 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 12,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 12,067 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 1.18% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 1,605 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,610 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 SAN to PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 94.7% on time and June 76.3%, a swing of 18 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,591 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to PDX, every carrier
- Alaska on PDX to SAN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to PDX63.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.