Carrier route record
WNHNL→OAK
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Oakland
- 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 OAK 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 55 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to OAK record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 106 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.1%
Every carrier on HNL to OAK, 729 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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 OAK
Southwest flew 365 of the 729 flights on HNL to OAK, most of the route. Its 88.2% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 82.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 88.2% to Alaska at 73.7%. 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 | 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+ |
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.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am96 flights89.6%
- 11am–2pm241 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am27 flights—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 89.6% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to OAK through the year
December is the weak month at 74.2% on time, against 100.0% in September. 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 31 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 92.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 82.7%. 10 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 55% of the 2,361 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.
- 55%Carrier
- 34%National Airspace System
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
34% 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 812 minutes out of 2,361, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,361 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 55%, 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 1,302 of the 2,361 delay minutes reported here.
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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.0% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.1% on time across 365 flights, 10 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 10 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 OAK
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 88.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 365 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to OAK, every carrier
- Southwest on OAK to HNL, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to OAK78.3%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to OAK73.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) 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.