Carrier route record
WNHNL→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 516
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest 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 35 minutes. That rests on 516 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,095 at 87.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to LAX record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 513 completed flights
Avg delay
36 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.3%
Every carrier on HNL to LAX, 5,540 flights
These figures cover 516 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to LAX
Southwest flew 516 of the 5,540 flights on HNL to LAX, about 9% of it. Its 88.5% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 87.8% 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 (this page) | 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 | 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 Delta and Hawaiian is 24 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 24 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 36 points, against 24 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm118 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm33 flights57.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights93.9%
Scale runs 50% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 93.9% on time across 365 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to LAX through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 66.7%. January is the strongest month at 100.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 33 points. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.4%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on HNL to LAX runs when it is late
Southwest on HNL to LAX often beats the schedule: 185 of 513 completed flights, 36%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 32 of the 59 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early185 flights36.1%
- Within 15 min269 flights52.4%
- 15–29 min late32 flights6.2%
- 30–59 min late20 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.0%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 513 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 51 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 21 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 29 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 Southwest on HNL to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 March 2026, 2 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Four of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 March 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 2 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 March 2026 | 1 hour 54 minutes | Carrier |
| 19 June 2026 | 1 hour 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 March 2026 | 1 hour 24 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 2,118 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 36%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
36% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 761 minutes out of 2,118, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,118 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,107 of the 2,118 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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 1.4% 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 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 75.5% on time across 516 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 516 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 Southwest on HNL to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 516 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 88.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 513 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LAX, every carrier
- Southwest on LAX to HNL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on HNL to LAX87.8%
- 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%
- Southwest 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.