Carrier route record
WNHNL→LAX
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 517
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 9%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 517 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 1,095 at 88.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to LAX record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 513 completed flights
Avg delay
39 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.77%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.1%
Every carrier on HNL to LAX, 5,458 flights
These figures cover 517 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to LAX
Southwest flew 517 of the 5,458 flights on HNL to LAX, about 9% of it. Its 89.7% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.3% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 63.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 619 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 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 | 619 | 63.0% | 65 min | 1.29% | D |
The spread between Delta 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.
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 16 points, against 25 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm84 flights79.8%
- 2pm–5pm68 flights77.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights94.2%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 94.2% 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 93.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 83.8%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 2,064 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 32%National Airspace System
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 1,188 of the 2,064 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,064 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.77%, below the national 1.81% 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 1.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 81.6% on time across 517 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 517 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. 517 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 89.7% 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 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 on HNL to LAX63.0%
- 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 7.04 million flight records
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.