Route reliability record
SNA→PDX
Santa Ana to Portland
- Flights
- 1,546
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 859 mi
- Carriers
- 1
This route earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 1,546 SNA to PDX flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly SNA to PDX: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 100.0% of the time and Monday flights 95.1%, against 93.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 155 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,526 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
93.1% on time across 1,546 flights
These figures cover 1,546 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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
Which airline is most reliable on SNA to PDX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 1,546 | 93.1% | 42 min | 1.29% | A |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Santa Ana to Portland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 4 of the top 5 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. SNA → PDXSanta Ana to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 91.9% | 93.1% | 1.29% | 8pm–5am, Mon | — |
| 2. BUR → PDXBurbank to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 90.3% | 91.2% | 1.02% | 5am–8am, Tue (route) | AS 122 14:21 |
| 3. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | Alaska Airlines | 89.2% | 90.0% | 0.90% | 5am–8am, Wed | AS 1315 14:08 |
| 4. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | Delta Air Lines | 85.4% | 86.2% | 0.89% | 11am–2pm, Wed | DL 2975 07:00 |
| 5. LAX → PDXLos Angeles to Portland | SkyWest Airlines | 75.9% | 76.2% | 0.33% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 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–8am361 flights96.3%
- 8am–11am70 flights90.0%
- 11am–2pm339 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm362 flights90.2%
- 5pm–8pm335 flights94.6%
- 8pm–5am79 flights100.0%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 100.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 10 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,546 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
December is the weak month at 88.4% on time, against 97.5% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. December was the busiest month here, with 150 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 88.8%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 4,491 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.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
59% 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 4,491 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 59 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 4,491 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.2% 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 859 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 90.8% on time across 1,546 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,546 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PDX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: this route's record is 93.1% on time with 1.29% cancelled, worth an A. The largest single lever is the 8pm–5am departure window, and the numbers below the table are where the reasoning behind that lives. 1,526 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SNA to PDX questions
How often is SNA to PDX delayed?
About one flight in fifteen arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 6.9% of the 1,546 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average.
How reliable is SNA to PDX compared with the rest of the country?
93.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 16 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SNA to PDX?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 100.0% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 90.0%, 10 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on SNA to PDX?
December is the weakest month at 88.4% on time, compared with 97.5% in April. Across the year that is 9 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- PDX to SNA — the return legseparate record
- John Wayne Airport (SNA) delay statistics
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- SNA to SFO, a related route70.3%
- SEA to PDX, a related route83.1%
- SNA to PHX, a related route82.3%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record93.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SNA to PDX and PDX to SNA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.