Carrier route record
WNHNL→LGB
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Long Beach
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on HNL to LGB earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 35 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to LGB record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 80 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 362 completed flights
Avg delay
33 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.4%
Every carrier on HNL to LGB, 730 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to LGB
Southwest flew 365 of the 730 flights on HNL to LGB, most of the route. Its 85.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.6% to Hawaiian at 76.5%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 365 | 85.6% | 33 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 81.8% | 43 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 76.5% | 37 min | 0.54% | B+ |
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 365 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's HNL to LGB record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 85.6% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to LGB through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 58.1%. August is the strongest month at 93.5%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 35 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.4%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 1,706 reported delay minutes.
- 39%National Airspace System
- 38%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 3%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 647 of the 1,706 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,706 reported delay minutes.
39% 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 660 minutes out of 1,706, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 0.6% 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 2,569 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 91.0% on time across 365 flights, 5 points above 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 5 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 LGB
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 85.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 362 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LGB, every carrier
- Southwest on LGB to HNL, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to LGB81.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to LGB76.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- Late aircraft, weather, or the airline: what actually causes US flight delays
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.