This question has several possible answers:
The short answer says about 3 hours give or take, depending on the weather, airport conditions and any other outstanding circumstance possible in an airport today. The longer and more involved answer says:
Checking with an internet ticket provider I learned that their average flight was: 2:59 minutes via Boeing 737 flying out of Denver, CO (DEN) via Northwestern Airlines to Portland OR, (PDX).
2:38 minutes via Boeing 737 flying out of Portland OR to Denver CO.
(thanks to CheapTickets for the reference flight)
This likely means that there are winds that slow the flight heading out of Colorado to Portland coming off of the mountains during the winter months. These same winds speed the flight back from Portland reducing the time about 30 minutes. Other times of the year may offer some slight variances due to local weather patterns.
Using Reference tools from the Internet:
Using Google Maps: Driving distance between those two cities is 1258 miles. Since the flight does take you over the Rocky Mountains and is less straight than an airplane might need to use, the actual flight distance should be a little less; I would estimate 1000 miles give or take.
Now when I queried Wolfram Alpha its answers were a bit different indicating a distance of 983 miles with a flight time of 1 hour and 50 minutes and a flight speed of 550 miles per hour.
After checking with Boeing specifications about the 737 I determined that the average cruising speed of this aircraft is 514 miles per hour. So I would go with the time from the Airline as the closest to the human experience versus the theoretical amount of time take by the perfect aircraft proposed by Wolfram Alpha.
Checking with an internet ticket provider I learned that their average flight was: 2:59 minutes via Boeing 737 flying out of Denver, CO (DEN) via Northwestern Airlines to Portland OR, (PDX).
2:38 minutes via Boeing 737 flying out of Portland OR to Denver CO.
(thanks to CheapTickets for the reference flight)
This likely means that there are winds that slow the flight heading out of Colorado to Portland coming off of the mountains during the winter months. These same winds speed the flight back from Portland reducing the time about 30 minutes. Other times of the year may offer some slight variances due to local weather patterns.
Using Reference tools from the Internet:
Using Google Maps: Driving distance between those two cities is 1258 miles. Since the flight does take you over the Rocky Mountains and is less straight than an airplane might need to use, the actual flight distance should be a little less; I would estimate 1000 miles give or take.
Now when I queried Wolfram Alpha its answers were a bit different indicating a distance of 983 miles with a flight time of 1 hour and 50 minutes and a flight speed of 550 miles per hour.
After checking with Boeing specifications about the 737 I determined that the average cruising speed of this aircraft is 514 miles per hour. So I would go with the time from the Airline as the closest to the human experience versus the theoretical amount of time take by the perfect aircraft proposed by Wolfram Alpha.