Route reliability record
HNL→SAN
Honolulu to San Diego
- Flights
- 1,765
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,614 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,765 HNL to SAN flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 729 at 84.4% on time.
Best time to fly HNL to SAN: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 83.6% of the time and Tuesday flights 83.2%, against 77.8% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 84.4% on time across 729 flights.
Key figures
On time
77.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,741 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.79%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
84.4% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 1,765 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to SAN
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 70.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 485 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 729 | 84.4% | 37 min | 0.14% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 551 | 75.4% | 43 min | 1.63% | B |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 485 | 70.5% | 72 min | 0.82% | C+ |
The spread between Southwest and Hawaiian is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Honolulu to San Diego
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 → SANHonolulu to San Diego | Southwest Airlines | 84.3% | 84.4% | 0.14% | 8am–11am, Sat | — |
| 2. HNL → SANHonolulu to San Diego | Alaska Airlines | 74.2% | 75.4% | 1.63% | 5am–8am, Fri | — |
| 3. HNL → SANHonolulu to San Diego | Hawaiian Airlines | 69.9% | 70.5% | 0.82% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
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 13 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am64 flights81.2%
- 8am–11am633 flights83.6%
- 11am–2pm541 flights75.1%
- 2pm–5pm73 flights70.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am454 flights73.4%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 83.6% of the time, against 70.8% for the afternoon window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 633 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 32 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 57.6% on time, against 89.9% 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 156 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 72.8%. 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 65% of the 20,000 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.
- 65%Carrier
- 17%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 1%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, 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 13,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,193 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.79%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,614 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 72.1% on time across 1,768 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,765 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 SAN 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. September runs 89.9% on time and December 57.6%, a swing of 32 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,741 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
HNL to SAN questions
How often is HNL to SAN delayed?
Roughly one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 22.2% of the 1,765 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on HNL to SAN?
Southwest Airlines leads at 84.4% on time across 729 flights. Hawaiian Airlines is at the other end on 70.5%, a gap of 14 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 SAN?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 83.6% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 70.8%, 13 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 SAN?
December is the weakest month at 57.6% on time, compared with 89.9% in September. Across the year that is 32 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
- SAN to HNL — the return legseparate record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on HNL to SAN84.4%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SAN75.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to SAN70.5%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- SFO to SAN, a related route66.6%
- HNL to LIH, a related route84.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record75.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record70.5%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. HNL to SAN and SAN 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.