Carrier route record

ASSMF→PDX

Alaska Airlines · Sacramento to Portland

Flights: 328
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 17%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on SMF to PDX earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 328 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, SkyWest Airlines, flew 444 at 84.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SMF to PDX record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 324 completed flights

Avg delay

77 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.22%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

82.3%

Every carrier on SMF to PDX, 1,977 flights

These figures cover 328 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 SMF to PDX

Alaska flew 328 of the 1,977 flights on SMF to PDX, about 17% of it. Its 90.1% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 90.1% to Southwest at 79.2%.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SMF to PDX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	328	90.1%	77 min	1.22%	A
SkyWest Airlines	444	84.7%	59 min	0.68%	B+
Southwest Airlines	1,205	79.2%	50 min	0.08%	B+

No carrier stands out. SkyWest tops the table at 84.7%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

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 13 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am1 flights—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm77 flights96.1%
2pm–5pm161 flights91.1%
5pm–8pm89 flights83.1%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 96.1% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 83.1%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 161 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on SMF to PDX through the year

Oct–Dec 202515 flights—
Jan–Mar 2026155 flights88.3%
Apr–Jun 2026158 flights91.1%

Scale runs 80% 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 90.1% on time across 328 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on SMF to PDX logged 15 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 155 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 158 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 90.1% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 94.7% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.8%. 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 68% of the 2,477 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
68%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
3%
Extreme weather
1%

68% 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 2,477 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 68 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 2,477 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.22% 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 3.7% 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.

At 479 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 93.8% on time across 328 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 328 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 SMF to PDX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 328 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 90.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 324 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