Carrier route record

OOSFO→PDX

SkyWest Airlines · San Francisco to Portland

Flights: 457
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with SkyWest Airlines.

SkyWest on SFO to PDX lands a B+, level with 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 457 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 SkyWest on SFO to PDX from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

78.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 456 completed flights

Avg delay

56 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

80.4%

Every carrier on SFO to PDX, 3,514 flights

These figures cover 457 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

SkyWest against every carrier on SFO to PDX

SkyWest flew 457 of the 3,514 flights on SFO to PDX, about 13% of it. Its 78.3% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 80.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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: about a point 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,661	81.1%	63 min	0.18%	B+
Alaska Airlines	1,383	80.2%	57 min	0.51%	B+
SkyWest Airlines (this page)	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%, about a point clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When SkyWest 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 457 flights.

5am–8am—
8am–11am61 flights75.4%
11am–2pm74 flights77.0%
2pm–5pm103 flights72.5%
5pm–8pm7 flights—
8pm–5am212 flights82.1%

Scale runs 65% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The overnight block holds up unusually well at 82.1% on time across 212 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 212 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

SkyWest on SFO to PDX through the year

Jul–Sep 2025196 flights78.1%
Oct–Dec 202540 flights77.5%
Jan–Mar 2026118 flights88.1%
Apr–Jun 2026103 flights67.6%

Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 78.3% on time across 457 flights.

SkyWest on SFO to PDX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jan–Mar 2026 at 88.1% on time and its weakest Apr–Jun 2026 at 67.6%, a swing of 21 points on roughly 114 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.1%. 22 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why SkyWest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 45% of the 5,518 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
45%
National Airspace System
27%
Carrier
24%
Extreme weather
3%

45% 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 5,518 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 5,518 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.22%, 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 84.2% on time across 458 flights, 6 points above 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 6 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 457 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking SkyWest on SFO to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 457 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 78.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 456 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures