Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS18
Portland (PDX) to New York (JFK) · scheduled 7:20 AM – 10:59 PM
How AS18 performs
1,042 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AS18 arrived on time 77.8% of the time, against 82.3% for all PDX → JFK flights, so this departure is 4.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,042 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS18 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS18 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
Ask for the position of AS18 right now, if receivers on the ground are hearing it. Nothing is requested until you press the button.
Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS18 | 77.8% | 1.15% | -4 min | 7.1% | 1,042 |
| Alaska Airlines on PDX → JFK | 78.5% | 2.05% | -3 min | 6.9% | 1,124 |
| All PDX → JFK flights | 82.3% | 1.83% | -9 min | 6.2% | 2,955 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS18 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS18 on PDX → JFK. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Does a late aircraft delay this flight?
How often the plane that flies AS18 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
AS18 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 7.5 hours on the ground at PDX, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AS18 pushed back an average of 16 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 7 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into PDX just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 942 of 1,031 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.
Against the network at the same turn length
| Share of departures | Inbound landed 15+ late | Left 15+ late after a late inbound | Left 15+ late after an on-time inbound |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS18 | 21% | 23% | 10% |
| Network, same turn | 29% | 12% | 9% |
A night on the ground absorbs most of a late arrival, so a late inbound matters far less on a turn this long than on a same-day one.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 6 hours or more, usually overnight. How often AS18’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is lower than the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AS18 left 15 or more minutes late is higher than the network’s.
More: Which Flight Numbers Pay for a Late Aircraft lists the flight numbers that pass a late aircraft on.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
From pushback to gate
When it leaves PDX late, does that still matter by the time it reaches JFK?
AS18 pushes back an average of 9.7 minutes late and reaches the gate at JFK an average of 5.8 minutes late. The 3.9 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 20.0 minutes on the taxiways at PDX, 1.1 minutes longer than a typical PDX departure in the same hour.
On arrival at JFK, AS18 spends 13.4 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is 2.0 minutes longer than a typical JFK arrival (11.5 min).
Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached JFK. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 23,173 departures from PDX scheduled in the clock hour AS18 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at JFK (351,546 flights), not just AS18’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves PDX
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AS18 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 23,173 departures from PDX are scheduled in the 7 AM–8 AM hour over the period, against 187,633 across the whole day.
AS18 is scheduled out of PDX at 7:20 AM, in the 7 AM–8 AM bank. Departures from PDX in that hour arrive on time 85.8% of the time against 83.2% across the airport’s whole day, so the hour AS18 leaves in is an ordinary one for PDX and explains nothing about its record either way.
The two airport figures cover every departure from PDX to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.
By day of week
Does AS18 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 15.3 percentage points.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.
When it goes wrong
The average describes a usual day. This is the day that ruins a connection.
41 min late
against a median of 4 min early
Percentiles over 1,042 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Other flights on this route
Same airports, same journey, different odds of arriving on time.
| Flight | Airline | On time | Median arrival | Operations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL451 | Delta Air Lines | 89.9% | 14 min early | 783 |
| AS18 this flight | Alaska Airlines | 77.8% | 4 min early | 1,042 |
Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. AS18 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,042 records of AS18 operating PDX → JFK, published by the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics. A flight counts as delayed when it arrives 15 or more minutes after schedule. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and reported separately. Flight numbers are resolved as carrier plus number plus route, because the same number serves different routes over time.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: Most and Least Reliable Flight Numbers · The Delay You Inherit · Making Up Time in the Air
Analysis last recomputed