Carrier route record
HAHNL→LAX
Hawaiian Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 619
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 11%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Hawaiian Airlines.
Hawaiian on HNL to LAX draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 619 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 517 at 89.7% on time.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 89.7% on time across 517 flights.
Key figures
On time
63.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 611 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.1%
Every carrier on HNL to LAX, 5,458 flights
These figures cover 619 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Hawaiian against every carrier on HNL to LAX
Hawaiian flew 619 of the 5,458 flights on HNL to LAX, about 11% of it. Its 63.0% on time is 18 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 81.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 89.7% to Hawaiian at 63.0%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 89.7% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 64.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 776 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 517 | 89.7% | 39 min | 0.77% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,095 | 88.3% | 72 min | 0.64% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 1,268 | 87.4% | 94 min | 0.47% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,183 | 84.6% | 137 min | 0.08% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 776 | 64.1% | 48 min | 0.39% | D+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines (this page) | 619 | 63.0% | 65 min | 1.29% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Alaska is 26 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 26 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Hawaiian runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 32 points, against 26 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am129 flights78.1%
- 8am–11am36 flights45.7%
- 11am–2pm54 flights64.2%
- 2pm–5pm204 flights58.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am196 flights60.5%
Scale runs 35% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 78.1% of the time, against 45.7% for the morning window. That is 32 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 204 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Hawaiian on HNL to LAX through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025305 flights68.5%
- Oct–Dec 2025314 flights57.5%
Scale runs 50% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 63.0% on time across 619 flights.
Split by quarter, Hawaiian on HNL to LAX logged 305 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 314 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 63.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 74.7% on time and Thursday the weakest at 56.2%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Hawaiian runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 83% of the 15,000 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.
- 83%Carrier
- 16%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
- 1%Extreme weather
- 0%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 83%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 12,000 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,685 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.29% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 runs 63.2% on time across 619 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 619 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 Hawaiian on HNL to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 619 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 63.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 611 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LAX, every carrier
- Hawaiian on LAX to HNL, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to LAX89.7%
- Delta Air Lines on HNL to LAX88.3%
- United Airlines on HNL to LAX87.4%
- American Airlines on HNL to LAX84.6%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to LAX64.1%
- Hawaiian 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
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.