Carrier route record
WNHNL→OAK
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Oakland
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 50%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to OAK record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.2%
Every carrier on HNL to OAK, 729 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.
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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 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 88.2% to Hawaiian at 73.8%. 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% | 53 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 242 | 74.2% | 48 min | 0.41% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 122 | 73.8% | 49 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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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–11am95 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm180 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am89 flights93.3%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 85.0% on time against 93.3% for 8pm–5am. 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 180 flights scheduled in it.
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 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 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on HNL to OAK runs when it is late
Southwest on HNL to OAK often beats the schedule: 106 of 365 completed flights, 29%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 22 of the 43 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 9 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early106 flights29.0%
- Within 15 min216 flights59.2%
- 15–29 min late22 flights6.0%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.3%
- 1–2 hours late4 flights1.1%
- 2+ hours late5 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 365 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 42 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 20 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 21 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 OAK.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on HNL to OAK
The latest arrival of the period was on 20 November 2025, 3 hours 44 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in April 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 20 November 2025 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 March 2026 | 3 hours 21 minutes | Carrier |
| 11 April 2026 | 3 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 2 April 2026 | 3 hours | National Airspace System |
| 1 April 2026 | 2 hours 55 minutes | National Airspace System |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 49% of the 2,260 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Carrier
- 38%National Airspace System
- 11%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Security
38% 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 865 minutes out of 2,260, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 2,260 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,114 of the 2,260 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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 2.5% 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 2,409 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 77.0% on time across 365 flights, 11 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 11 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
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to OAK74.2%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to OAK73.8%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Oakland International (OAK) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.