Carrier route record

HAHNL→SAN

Hawaiian Airlines · Honolulu to San Diego

Flights: 485
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 27%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Hawaiian Airlines.

Hawaiian on HNL to SAN sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 7 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 485 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 729 at 84.4% on time.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Hawaiian on HNL to SAN runs 7 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 71 extra late arrivals.

On time

70.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 478 completed flights

Avg delay

72 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.8%

Every carrier on HNL to SAN, 1,765 flights

These figures cover 485 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Hawaiian against every carrier on HNL to SAN

Hawaiian flew 485 of the 1,765 flights on HNL to SAN, about 27% of it. Its 70.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 84.4% to Hawaiian at 70.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 84.4% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 75.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 551 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on HNL to SAN
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 (this page)	485	70.5%	72 min	0.82%	C+

Southwest leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Hawaiian runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am—
8am–11am159 flights79.0%
11am–2pm185 flights71.7%
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am141 flights59.6%

Scale runs 50% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 59.6% on time, against 79.0% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 185 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Hawaiian on HNL to SAN through the year

Jul–Sep 2025248 flights83.0%
Oct–Dec 2025237 flights57.1%

Scale runs 50% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 70.5% on time across 485 flights.

Split by quarter, Hawaiian on HNL to SAN logged 248 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 237 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 70.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 80.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.5%. 21 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Hawaiian runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 78% of the 10,000 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.

Carrier
78%
Late-arriving aircraft
17%
Extreme weather
4%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 78%, 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 7,990 of the 10,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 10,203 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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 costs

For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.

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 60.8% on time across 487 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. 485 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 Hawaiian on HNL to SAN

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 485 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 70.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 478 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures