Route reliability record
HNL→OAK
Honolulu to Oakland
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,409 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 HNL to OAK flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly HNL to OAK: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.6% of the time and Monday flights 86.5%, against 82.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 45 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 728 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
88.2% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to OAK
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 | 365 | 88.2% | 55 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 78.3% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 180 | 73.7% | 41 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Honolulu to Oakland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HNL → SJCHonolulu to San Jose | Southwest Airlines | 89.0% | 89.0% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
| 2. HNL → OAKHonolulu to Oakland | Southwest Airlines | 88.2% | 88.2% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 3. HNL → SFOHonolulu to San Francisco | United Airlines | 85.3% | 85.7% | 0.52% | 8am–11am, Tue | UA 373 07:00 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 729 flights.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am96 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm569 flights80.5%
- 2pm–5pm36 flights80.6%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. 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 80.5% on time against 89.6% for 8am–11am. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 569 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 71.0% on time, against 91.9% in July. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 76.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 59% of the 6,113 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.
- 59%Carrier
- 22%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 3,587 of the 6,113 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,113 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.0% 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 2,409 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 80.4% on time across 729 flights, within 2 points 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. 729 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in OAK after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 729 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 82.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 728 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HNL to OAK questions
How often is HNL to OAK delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 17.9% of the 729 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is HNL to OAK compared with the rest of the country?
82.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HNL to OAK?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 80.5%, 9 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are December delays on HNL to OAK?
December is the weakest month at 71.0% on time, compared with 91.9% in July. Across the year that is 21 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- OAK to HNL — the return legseparate record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to OAK88.2%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to OAK78.3%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to OAK73.7%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- LAS to OAK, a related route71.6%
- HNL to LIH, a related route84.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record88.2%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record78.3%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record73.7%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. HNL to OAK and OAK to HNL are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.