Flight number record

UA 1221

United Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles

Route: HNL → LAX
Departs: 07:00
Flights: 307
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1221, check with United Airlines.

UA 1221 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.7 hours. That rests on 307 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1221's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 129 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 305 completed flights

Avg delay

162 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.65%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

3.9%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 307 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.

Schedule

When UA 1221 flies

UA 1221 flies HNL to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:00, used on 122 of 307 flights, with 08:00 (116 flights) and 08:30 (49 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:00122 flights39.7%
Departs 08:00116 flights37.8%
Departs 08:3049 flights16.0%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 07:00 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and UA 1221 runs level with that at 90.5%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

UA 1221 next to HNL to LAX

Every carrier on HNL to LAX combined arrived on time 81.1% of the time across 5,458 flights, so UA 1221 is 9 points ahead of it. United flew 1,268 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 87.4% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 12 points.

UA 1221 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1221thin sample	307	90.5%	162 min	0.65%	A+
All United Airlines on HNL–LAX	1,268	87.4%	94 min	0.47%	A+
All carriers on HNL–LAX	5,458	81.1%	77 min	0.53%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1221 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter UA 1221 held fairly steady: 90.2% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.4% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91.1% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 8 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights90.2%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.3%
Jan–Mar 202632 flights84.4%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.1%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1221 did best on Sunday at 95.5% on time and worst on Wednesday at 83.3%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why UA 1221 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 54% of the 4,706 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.

Carrier
54%
Late-arriving aircraft
40%
National Airspace System
5%

40% 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 4,706 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 4,706 delay minutes reported on UA 1221.

Cancellations are rare at 0.65%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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.

At 2,556 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on ten other city pairs in the data, including SRQ to ORD (36), DEN to ONT (21) and LAX to ORD (20), but none flew often enough under UA 1221 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to HNL to LAX only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 307 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking UA 1221

For a booking, UA 1221 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.5% on time and 0.65% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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.

Key figures