Route reliability record
HNL→KOA
Honolulu to Kailua-Kona
- Flights
- 7,226
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 163 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 7,226 HNL to KOA flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 1,770 at 90.9% on time.
Best time to fly HNL to KOA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.7% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.6%, against 85.3% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 90.9% on time across 1,770 flights.
Key figures
On time
85.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 7,119 completed flights
Avg delay
39 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
90.9% on time across 1,770 flights
These figures cover 7,226 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to KOA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 90.9% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 82.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,696 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 1,770 | 90.9% | 44 min | 1.30% | A |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 1,760 | 86.7% | 38 min | 1.08% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 3,696 | 82.0% | 38 min | 1.62% | B |
Southwest leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Honolulu to Kailua-Kona
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HNL → KOAHonolulu to Kailua-Kona | Southwest Airlines | 89.7% | 90.9% | 1.30% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. HNL → KOAHonolulu to Kailua-Kona | Hawaiian Airlines | 85.8% | 86.7% | 1.08% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
| 3. HNL → KOAHonolulu to Kailua-Kona | Alaska Airlines | 80.7% | 82.0% | 1.62% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am1,193 flights94.7%
- 8am–11am1,525 flights92.9%
- 11am–2pm1,492 flights75.9%
- 2pm–5pm989 flights75.5%
- 5pm–8pm1,309 flights84.0%
- 8pm–5am718 flights89.2%
Scale runs 65% to 100%.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.7% of the time, against 75.5% for the afternoon window. That is 19 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 1,525 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter HNL to KOA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On HNL to KOA, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 94.7% on time and the worst is 2pm–5pm at 75.5%, a wide gap of 19.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am94.7%
- 8–11am92.9%
- 11am–2pm75.9%
- 2–5pm75.5%
- 5–8pm84.0%
- 8pm–5am89.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 100%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 94.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 650 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 81.3%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 50% of the 40,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 50%Carrier
- 37%Late-arriving aircraft
- 9%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
37% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 40,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 to one. The split is drawn from 40,282 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 50%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 20,000 of the 40,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.41% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.4% 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 163 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 83.8% on time across 7,227 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 7,226 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in KOA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 94.9% on time and March 78.6%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 7,119 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HNL to KOA questions
How often is HNL to KOA delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 14.7% of the 7,226 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 40 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to KOA?
Southwest Airlines leads at 90.9% on time across 1,770 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 82.0%, a gap of 9 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HNL to KOA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.7% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 75.5%, 19 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on HNL to KOA?
March is the weakest month at 78.6% on time, compared with 94.9% in September. Across the year that is 16 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- KOA to HNL — the return legseparate record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to KOA90.9%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to KOA86.7%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to KOA82.0%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.1%
- LAX to KOA, a related route81.8%
- HNL to LIH, a related route83.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record90.9%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record86.7%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record82.0%
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. HNL to KOA and KOA to HNL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.