Flight number record
UA 1221
United Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Route
- HNL → LAX
- Departs
- 07:00
- Flights
- 307
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 2.2 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 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 128 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 304 completed flights
Avg delay
132 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.98%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 307 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 184 of 307 flights, with 08:00 (103 flights) next.
- Departs 07:00184 flights59.9%
- Departs 08:00103 flights33.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
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 90.1%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
UA 1221 next to HNL to LAX
Every carrier on HNL to LAX combined arrived on time 80.3% of the time across 5,540 flights, so UA 1221 is 10 points ahead of it. United flew 1,294 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 85.8% on time. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 78.8%, which this flight beats by 11 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| UA 1221thin sample | 307 | 90.1% | 132 min | 0.98% | A+ |
| All United Airlines on HNL–LAX | 1,294 | 85.8% | 87 min | 0.54% | A+ |
| All carriers on HNL–LAX | 5,540 | 80.3% | 76 min | 0.58% | B+ |
| United Airlines, whole network | 830,825 | 78.8% | 73 min | 1.02% | B |
Across the year
UA 1221 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter UA 1221 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 92.3% in Oct–Dec 2025, 84.4% in Jan–Mar 2026, 91.1% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 86.9% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights92.3%
- Jan–Mar 202632 flights84.4%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights91.1%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights86.9%
Scale runs 75% to 100%.
By weekday, UA 1221 did best on Sunday at 97.7% on time and worst on Wednesday at 85.7%. Each day rests on about 44 flights, so a gap of 12 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.
Arrival by arrival
How late UA 1221 runs when it is late
UA 1221 often beats the schedule: 131 of 304 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 16 of the 30 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 10 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early131 flights43.1%
- Within 15 min143 flights47.0%
- 15–29 min late16 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late4 flights1.3%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.3%
- 2+ hours late6 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 304 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 26 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. 9 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for UA 1221
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 March 2026, 13 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On four of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 March 2026 | 13 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 May 2026 | 9 hours 36 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 November 2025 | 9 hours 22 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 August 2026 | 7 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 October 2025 | 6 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why UA 1221 runs late
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 3,966 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 44%Carrier
- 7%National Airspace System
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,966 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. The split is drawn from 3,966 delay minutes reported on UA 1221.
Cancellations sit at 0.98% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 nine other city pairs in the data, including SRQ to ORD (36), DEN to ONT (21) and LAX to SFO (19), 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: 90.1% on time and 0.98% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LAX, every carrier and departure
- LAX to HNL, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 427 on the same route76.4%
- American Airlines 162 on the same route79.2%
- Delta Air Lines 658 on the same route92.5%
- Delta Air Lines 422 on the same route94.7%
- United Airlines 1157 on the same route80.4%
- United Airlines 1169 on the same route90.1%
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on-time record
- Every United Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.