Flight profile · Alaska Airlines
AS397
Orlando (MCO) to San Diego (SAN) · scheduled 4:30 PM – 6:55 PM
How AS397 performs
1,115 operations, July 2023 – July 2026.
AS397 arrived on time 70.3% of the time, against 73.8% for all MCO → SAN flights, so this departure is 3.5 percentage points worse than the route as a whole. Against Alaska Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 5.2 points worse.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 1,115 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If AS397 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.
Where AS397 is right now
A live reading, only if you ask for it. It is not part of the reliability record above.
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Against the rest of the route
| Flight or route | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe | Flights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS397 | 70.3% | 1.70% | -2 min | 12.2% | 1,115 |
| Alaska Airlines on MCO → SAN | 75.5% | 1.83% | -5 min | 8.8% | 1,863 |
| All MCO → SAN flights | 73.8% | 1.89% | -4 min | 8.7% | 2,492 |
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
Why AS397 runs late
Where US DOT attributed the delay minutes on this flight.
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
weather severe enough to stop this flight specifically
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
screening or terminal security incidents
Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for AS397 on MCO → SAN. 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 AS397 comes in late, and what that does to the departure.
When the aircraft came in 15 or more minutes late, AS397 pushed back an average of 59 minutes late; when it came in on time or early, an average of 3 minutes late.
Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into MCO just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 1,079 of 1,098 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AS397 | 20% | 89% | 11% |
| Network, same turn | 17% | 68% | 9% |
The schedule leaves a normal turn: enough time to clean and board if the aircraft is on time, little to spare if it is not.
The network row is every flight with a scheduled turn of 60 to 89 minutes. How often AS397’s aircraft landed 15 or more minutes late is about the same as the network’s and, once the aircraft was late, how often AS397 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 MCO late, does that still matter by the time it reaches SAN?
AS397 pushes back an average of 15.7 minutes late and reaches the gate at SAN an average of 13.3 minutes late. The 2.4 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 24.3 minutes on the taxiways at MCO, 2.8 minutes longer than a typical MCO departure in the same hour.
On arrival at SAN, AS397 spends 8.3 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 2.3 minutes longer than a typical SAN arrival (6.0 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 SAN. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 28,355 departures from MCO scheduled in the clock hour AS397 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at SAN (297,664 flights), not just AS397’s own. More on taxi time.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026
The hour it leaves MCO
Part of any flight’s record belongs to the clock rather than to the flight. AS397 has one departure time, so this is what that time is worth.
On-time arrival rate. 28,355 departures from MCO are scheduled in the 4 PM–5 PM hour over the period, against 498,221 across the whole day.
AS397 is scheduled out of MCO at 4:30 PM, in the 4 PM–5 PM bank. Departures from MCO in that hour arrive on time 65.2% of the time against 74.8% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 9.6 points worse before anything about this particular flight is considered.
The two airport figures cover every departure from MCO 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 AS397 run worse on particular days?
Tuesday is historically the most reliable day and Sunday the least, a gap of 15.8 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.
73 min late
against a median of 2 min early
AS397 has an average that understates its risk: a typical arrival is 2 min early, but the worst tenth are 75 minutes worse than that. If the trip has something unmissable at the end of it, the median is the wrong number to plan against.
Percentiles over 1,115 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 1,115 records of AS397 operating MCO → SAN, 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