Route profile
PDX→SFO
Flight reliability, delays and best times to fly from Portland to San Francisco, 550 miles.
Right now
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Aviation weather is not currently a factor.
Route reliability
July 2023 – July 2026
Better than 36% of comparable major US routes (4,598 compared)
Calculated from 10,724 flights. How this is calculated
PDX → SFO arrives on time 72.8% of the time; the return trip, SFO → PDX, arrives on time 80.0% of the time, a 7.2-point gap between the two directions of the same city pair.
PDX → SFO spends 26.1 minutes on the ground on a 550-mile trip: 19.2 minutes from pushback to wheels-up at PDX and 6.9 minutes from touchdown to gate at SFO.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026
What stands out
The airline matters unusually much on this route, a wider carrier-to-carrier gap than 99% of 2,692 comparable routes.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 78.5% of the time, against 52.1% for Frontier Airlines, flying the exact same route.
Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Ranked against every other route with the same kind of figure and at least 2,692 in the comparison.
Why PDX → SFO flights are cancelled
July 2023 – July 2026
PDX → SFO cancelled 92 of 10,724 scheduled flights — about 1 in every 117. The reason filed most often was the airline, 64.1% of the cancellations coded on this route — about 1 in every 182 scheduled flights.
Share of cancellations
Of 92 cancelled departures carrying a reason code.
What each reason means
Crew, maintenance, aircraft cleaning, baggage or fueling: what BTS counts as within the carrier’s own control.
59 cancellations, 64.1% of the total.
Conditions the carrier judged severe enough to stop the flight: a blizzard, a hurricane, a line of thunderstorms.
20 cancellations, 21.7% of the total.
Airport capacity, air traffic control flow programs, heavy traffic and ordinary bad weather. A system decision, not the airline’s.
13 cancellations, 14.1% of the total.
A terminal evacuation, a security breach, screening equipment failure, or screening queues over 29 minutes.
0 cancellations, 0.0% of the total.
Reason codes are the operating airline’s own filing with US DOT, not an independent finding of fault. Ordinary bad weather is filed under air traffic, so weather’s full share is larger than its bar.
92 coded cancellations were recorded on PDX → SFO; the section appears from 50.
When it goes wrong
July 2023 – July 2026
51 min late
against a median of 2 min early
Percentiles over 10,724 operations; cancelled and diverted flights are counted separately.
Will your connection be tight enough?
Layovers at SFO after arriving from PDX.
| Connection time | Chance of missing | Reads as |
|---|---|---|
| 30 min | 44% | Likely to miss |
| 45 min | 26% | High risk |
| 60 min | 17% | High risk |
| 90 min | 7.9% | Some risk |
| 120 min | 4.1% | Low risk |
This is one leg of a connection. Gate changes and the next flight's own schedule matter too. And a connection can fail before delay is even the question — this route cancels 0.86% of the time and diverts 0.09% of the time, which a late arrival never shows up in.
Chance of missing is the share of 10,622 arrivals on this route that landed later than the connection time less 30 minutes to reach the next gate.
The worst tenth of arrivals on this route land at least 51 minutes late (90th-percentile gate arrival delay), over 10,724 operations.
Any other layover length: connection checker.
Best time to fly
PDX → SFO flights departing 12–3 PM arrived on time 79.5% of the time, against 60.7% for 6–9 PM departures, a gap of 18.8 percentage points.
By departure window
By departure hour
- 12 AM to 4 AM: too few flights to score
- 5 AM: 95.2% on time from 419 flights
- 6 AM: 95.8% on time from 575 flights
- 7 AM: 64.8% on time from 1,508 flights
- 8 AM: 60.8% on time from 669 flights
- 9 AM: 74.6% on time from 269 flights
- 10 AM: 73.9% on time from 1,150 flights
- 11 AM: 69.9% on time from 477 flights
- 12 PM: 83.3% on time from 120 flights
- 1 PM: 79.0% on time from 1,101 flights
- 2 PM: 79.4% on time from 523 flights
- 3 PM: 76.5% on time from 821 flights
- 4 PM: 75.8% on time from 510 flights
- 5 PM: 73.5% on time from 685 flights
- 6 PM: 57.7% on time from 137 flights
- 7 PM: 60.9% on time from 1,454 flights
- 8 PM: too few flights to score
- 9 PM: 77.4% on time from 197 flights
- 10 PM to 11 PM: too few flights to score
Why PDX → SFO runs late
July 2023 – July 2026
airspace and airport capacity, including weather-driven flow control
the inbound aircraft was late, so this flight started late
crew, maintenance, boarding and fueling, all within the carrier’s control
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 PDX → SFO. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.
How this route holds up in bad weather
July 2023 – July 2026
Bad weather raises cancellations by a similar amount at both ends of PDX to SFO: 2.2 times the normal rate at PDX and 1.7 times at SFO. Cancelled in bad weather against normal hours: PDX 1.7% against 0.8%, SFO 1.5% against 0.9%. Flights that did leave SFO in bad weather arrived on time 73.0% of the time, against 79.8% in normal hours.
Bad weather and normal hours at the airports
Scheduled departures, July 2023 – July 2026| Departures from | PDX | SFO |
|---|---|---|
| Cancelled in bad weather | 1.7% | 1.5% |
| Cancelled in normal hours | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| Arrived on time, bad weather | 84.6% | 73.0% |
| Arrived on time, normal hours | 83.0% | 79.8% |
| Departures in bad weather | 11,286 | 36,006 |
Alaska Airlines (2.1% cancelled against 1.2% for the other carriers at PDX) cancelled more departures from PDX in bad weather than the other carriers there did in the same months. None of the route’s other carriers was clearly better. One more carrier flies this route but has too few bad-weather departures from PDX to compare.
This route’s airlines in bad weather at PDX
All departures from PDX| Airline | Bad-weather departures | Cancelled | Other carriers |
|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 1,275 | 1.4%about level | 1.8% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,681 | 2.4%about level | 2.0% |
| Alaska Airlines | 4,003 | 2.1%above the others | 1.2% |
These are airport figures, not route figures: every scheduled departure from PDX and SFO, to any destination, in hours the weather report called bad. The airline rows count each carrier’s departures from PDX on every route.
Weather source and limits. In full: PDX (airlines), SFO, What Weather Costs Each Airport, Who Cancels More When the Weather Turns, Airports That Change Places When Weather Turns.
Airlines on this route
Carriers with at least 200 flights, by the airline that operated each one.
| Carrier | Flights | On time | Cancelled | Median delay | Severe |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 5,381 | 73.0% | 0.72% | -4 min | 8.1% |
| Alaska Airlines | 3,399 | 71.3% | 0.97% | 0 min | 7.2% |
| SkyWest Airlines | 1,678 | 78.5% | 0.77% | -4 min | 7.4% |
| Frontier Airlines | 266 | 52.1% | 2.63% | 12 min | 22.8% |
United Airlines flew 50.2% of the 10,724 flights listed. Frontier Airlines cancelled 2.63% of its flights here against 0.72% for United Airlines.
SkyWest Airlines arrived on time 26.4 percentage points more often than Frontier Airlines on this route.
Weekly and seasonal patterns
By day of week
Saturday is historically the most reliable day and Monday the least, a gap of 10.2 percentage points.
By month
- Jan: 80.5%
- Feb: 63.9%
- Mar: 72.0%
- Apr: 59.8%
- May: 61.7%
- Jun: 65.4%
- Jul: 71.3%
- Aug: 80.2%
- Sep: 80.4%
- Oct: 82.0%
- Nov: 78.7%
- Dec: 75.6%
April is historically the weakest month and October the strongest, a spread of 22.2 percentage points.
Reliability over time
July 2023 – July 2026
- July 2023: 80.1% from 289 flights
- August 2023: 78.5% from 277 flights
- September 2023: 79.0% from 283 flights
- October 2023: 89.2% from 269 flights
- November 2023: 87.1% from 263 flights
- December 2023: 76.3% from 242 flights
- January 2024: 64.1% from 221 flights
- February 2024: 43.5% from 250 flights
- March 2024: 49.8% from 273 flights
- April 2024: 41.6% from 245 flights
- May 2024: 51.6% from 291 flights
- June 2024: 54.1% from 250 flights
- July 2024: 80.5% from 351 flights
- August 2024: 80.2% from 351 flights
- September 2024: 81.7% from 318 flights
- October 2024: 83.4% from 356 flights
- November 2024: 74.0% from 345 flights
- December 2024: 76.7% from 334 flights
- January 2025: 89.2% from 288 flights
- February 2025: 75.7% from 262 flights
- March 2025: 76.0% from 290 flights
- April 2025: 78.8% from 270 flights
- May 2025: 86.0% from 293 flights
- June 2025: 86.1% from 303 flights
- July 2025: 78.6% from 316 flights
- August 2025: 81.5% from 325 flights
- September 2025: 80.2% from 329 flights
- October 2025: 74.9% from 343 flights
- November 2025: 76.4% from 280 flights
- December 2025: 73.4% from 238 flights
- January 2026: 83.6% from 253 flights
- February 2026: 71.5% from 256 flights
- March 2026: 88.9% from 288 flights
- April 2026: 57.4% from 300 flights
- May 2026: 47.7% from 299 flights
- June 2026: 53.3% from 289 flights
- July 2026: 44.2% from 294 flights
Over the most recent 12 months (2025-08 to 2026-07), on-time arrivals averaged 69.4% against 80.5% in the 12 months before — declining by 11.1 percentage points.
Data and methodology
Calculated by FlyerIntel from 10,724 PDX → SFO flight records from the US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, covering July 2023 – July 2026. Late means 15 or more minutes past scheduled arrival; cancelled and diverted flights are left out of on-time rates.
Full methodology · Data sources · Report a problem
Related research: How Long a Layover Needs to Be · Two Airlines on One Route · Best Time of Day to Fly From Major US Airports
Analysis last recomputed