Carrier route record
AAHNL→LAX
American Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,182
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 21%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on HNL to LAX lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average. That rests on 1,182 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 516 at 88.5% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 88.5% on time across 516 flights.
Key figures
On time
82.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,181 completed flights
Avg delay
135 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on HNL to LAX, 5,540 flights
These figures cover 1,182 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on HNL to LAX
American flew 1,182 of the 5,540 flights on HNL to LAX, about 21% of it. Its 82.2% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 88.5% to Hawaiian at 64.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 88.5% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 64.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 400 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 516 | 88.5% | 36 min | 0.58% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,095 | 87.8% | 67 min | 0.73% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,294 | 85.8% | 87 min | 0.54% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,182 | 82.2% | 135 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,053 | 65.5% | 49 min | 0.57% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 400 | 64.0% | 71 min | 2.00% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Hawaiian is 25 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 25 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on HNL to LAX
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am157 flights89.8%
- 8am–11am43 flights88.4%
- 11am–2pm238 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm291 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am453 flights80.6%
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 79.8% on time against 89.8% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 453 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on HNL to LAX through the year
July is the worst month at 71.8% on time, 19 points below April, the best at 91.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.7%, a spread of 16 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on HNL to LAX runs when it is late
American on HNL to LAX often beats the schedule: 405 of 1,181 completed flights, 34%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 210 late arrivals split 73 under half an hour, 69 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 68 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early405 flights34.3%
- Within 15 min566 flights47.9%
- 15–29 min late73 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late69 flights5.8%
- 1–2 hours late39 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late29 flights2.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,181 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
54 of 209 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. 55 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on HNL to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 February 2026, 48 hours 39 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 February 2026 | 48 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 January 2026 | 29 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 29 March 2026 | 26 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 May 2026 | 25 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 June 2026 | 20 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 64% of the 28,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 64%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 64%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 18,000 of the 28,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 28,406 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
5.8% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.3 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.2% on time across 1,182 flights, 6 points below this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,182 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on HNL to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 91.1% on time and July 71.8%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,181 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LAX, every carrier
- American on LAX to HNL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to LAX88.5%
- Delta Air Lines on HNL to LAX87.8%
- United Airlines on HNL to LAX85.8%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to LAX65.5%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to LAX64.0%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.