Carrier route record
ASSFO→PDX
Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Portland
- Flights
- 1,383
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 39%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SFO to PDX lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,383 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,661 at 81.1% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on SFO to PDX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,376 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.51%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
80.4%
Every carrier on SFO to PDX, 3,514 flights
These figures cover 1,383 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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 SFO to PDX
Alaska flew 1,383 of the 3,514 flights on SFO to PDX, about 39% of it. Its 80.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 81.1% to Frontier at 75.0%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,661 | 81.1% | 63 min | 0.18% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,383 | 80.2% | 57 min | 0.51% | B+ |
| SkyWest Airlines | 457 | 78.3% | 56 min | 0.22% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 13 | 75.0% | 62 min | 7.69% | B− |
No carrier stands out. United tops the table at 81.1%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SFO to PDX
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 25 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am101 flights94.0%
- 8am–11am272 flights93.7%
- 11am–2pm349 flights69.5%
- 2pm–5pm313 flights75.6%
- 5pm–8pm334 flights80.5%
- 8pm–5am14 flights—
Scale runs 60% to 100%. 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 69.5% on time against 94.0% 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 349 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SFO to PDX through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.7% 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 132 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 87.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 73.6%. 14 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 60% of the 15,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 9%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
60% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 60 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 15,418 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 94.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.51%, 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
5.5% 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 about 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 72.0% on time across 1,383 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,383 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 SFO to PDX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.7% on time and May 58.1%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,376 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to PDX, every carrier
- Alaska on PDX to SFO, the return leg
- United Airlines on SFO to PDX81.1%
- SkyWest Airlines on SFO to PDX78.3%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) 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.