Route reliability record
HNL→PHX
Honolulu to Phoenix
- Flights
- 1,317
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,917 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route 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 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,317 HNL to PHX flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 365 at 93.9% on time.
Best time to fly HNL to PHX: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.4%, against 85.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 74 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,301 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.06%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
93.9% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,317 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
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to PHX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 93.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 85.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 587 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 93.9% | 29 min | 1.64% | A |
| American Airlines | 587 | 85.5% | 125 min | 1.36% | A |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 80.7% | 64 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 70.5% | 41 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Southwest leads American by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on HNL to PHX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Honolulu to Phoenix
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. HNL → PHXHonolulu to Phoenix | Southwest Airlines | 92.4% | 93.9% | 1.64% | 8pm–5am, Sun | — |
| 2. HNL → PHXHonolulu to Phoenix | American Airlines | 84.3% | 85.5% | 1.36% | 8pm–5am, Wed | AA 692 20:59 |
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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am128 flights66.9%
- 11am–2pm237 flights80.2%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am952 flights88.7%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 88.7% on time across 952 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 952 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 70.8%. February is the strongest month at 94.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 23 points. March was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 79.8%. 11 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 55% of the 16,000 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
- 30%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%Extreme weather
- 7%National Airspace System
- 1%Security
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 8,550 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,631 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.06% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% 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 2,917 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 81.4% on time across 1,317 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,317 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in PHX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. February runs 94.0% on time and March 70.8%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,301 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HNL to PHX questions
How often is HNL to PHX delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 15.0% of the 1,317 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to PHX?
Southwest Airlines leads at 93.9% on time across 365 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 85.5%, a gap of 8 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on HNL to PHX?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 88.7% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 66.9%, 22 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 March delays on HNL to PHX?
March is the weakest month at 70.8% on time, compared with 94.0% in February. Across the year that is 23 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
- PHX to HNL — the return legseparate record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to PHX93.9%
- American Airlines on HNL to PHX85.5%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to PHX80.7%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to PHX70.5%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- DEN to PHX, a related route75.7%
- HNL to LIH, a related route84.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record93.9%
- American Airlines on-time record85.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record80.7%
- 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 PHX and PHX 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.