Carrier route record
DLHNL→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,095
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 20%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on HNL to LAX 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,095 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
87.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,086 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.73%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on HNL to LAX, 5,540 flights
These figures cover 1,095 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
Delta against every carrier on HNL to LAX
Delta flew 1,095 of the 5,540 flights on HNL to LAX, about 20% of it. Its 87.8% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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 (this page) | 1,095 | 87.8% | 67 min | 0.73% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,294 | 85.8% | 87 min | 0.54% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 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
Delta flight numbers on HNL to LAX
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 24 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am219 flights99.1%
- 8am–11am146 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm239 flights75.2%
- 2pm–5pm126 flights78.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights92.5%
Scale runs 65% to 100%. 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 75.2% on time against 99.1% 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on HNL to LAX through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 95.7% 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 90.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.7%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on HNL to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on HNL to LAX often beats the schedule: 422 of 1,086 completed flights, 39%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 132 late arrivals split 64 under half an hour, 36 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 32 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early422 flights38.9%
- Within 15 min532 flights49.0%
- 15–29 min late64 flights5.9%
- 30–59 min late36 flights3.3%
- 1–2 hours late11 flights1.0%
- 2+ hours late21 flights1.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,086 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 80 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 14% of them. In the other direction, 63 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on HNL to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 September 2025, 9 hours 20 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 September 2025 | 9 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 August 2026 | 9 hours 7 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 March 2026 | 5 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 February 2026 | 5 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 December 2025 | 5 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 46% of the 8,783 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Carrier
- 29%Late-arriving aircraft
- 23%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,059 of the 8,783 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,783 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 99.1% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.73%, below the national 1.89% 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 stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 80.6% on time across 1,095 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,095 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 Delta on HNL to LAX
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 95.7% on time and March 71.7%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,086 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to HNL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to LAX88.5%
- United Airlines on HNL to LAX85.8%
- American Airlines on HNL to LAX82.2%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to LAX65.5%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to LAX64.0%
- Delta Air Lines 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.