Carrier route record

ASSJC→PDX

Alaska Airlines · San Jose to Portland

Flights: 164
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 10%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on SJC to PDX earns an A+. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 18 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 164 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 484 at 93.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SJC to PDX record is 18 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 175 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

95.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 164 completed flights

Avg delay

101 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.9%

Every carrier on SJC to PDX, 1,621 flights

These figures cover 164 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 SJC to PDX

Alaska flew 164 of the 1,621 flights on SJC to PDX, about 10% of it. Its 95.1% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 95.1% to Southwest at 79.1%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. SkyWest Airlines arrives on time 93.0% of the time; Southwest Airlines manages 79.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 973 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SJC to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	164	95.1%	101 min	0.00%	A+
SkyWest Airlines	484	93.0%	66 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines	973	79.1%	50 min	0.00%	B+

The spread between SkyWest and Southwest is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

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 164 flights.

5am–8am41 flights95.1%
8am–11am50 flights100.0%
11am–2pm5 flights—
2pm–5pm60 flights93.3%
5pm–8pm8 flights—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 100.0% on time for the 8am–11am window against 93.3% for 2pm–5pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 60 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SJC to PDX through the year

Oct–Dec 202533 flights93.9%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights91.8%
Apr–Jun 202670 flights98.6%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. 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 95.1% on time across 164 flights.

Quarter by quarter Alaska on SJC to PDX held fairly steady: 93.9% in Oct–Dec 2025, 91.8% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 98.6% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 7 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 76% of the 805 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.

Carrier
76%
Late-arriving aircraft
23%
National Airspace System
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 613 of the 805 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 805 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.0% 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 569 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 runs 93.9% on time across 164 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 164 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 Alaska on SJC to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 164 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 95.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 164 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