Carrier route record
WNHNL→PHX
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Phoenix
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on HNL to PHX earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 16 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 30 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to PHX record is 16 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 163 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
93.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights
Avg delay
29 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
85.0%
Every carrier on HNL to PHX, 1,317 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 PHX
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,317 flights on HNL to PHX, about 28% of it. Its 93.9% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 93.9% to Hawaiian at 70.5%. 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 | 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+ |
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.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 93.9% on time across 365 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 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to PHX through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 73.3%. August is the strongest month at 100.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 90.4%. 6 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. National Airspace System accounts for 43% of the 628 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.
- 43%National Airspace System
- 34%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, 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 214 of the 628 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 628 reported delay minutes.
43% 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 269 minutes out of 628, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.27%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.3% 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 82.0% on time across 365 flights, 12 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 12 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 PHX
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 93.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 358 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to PHX, every carrier
- Southwest on PHX to HNL, the return leg
- American Airlines on HNL to PHX85.5%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to PHX80.7%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to PHX70.5%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.