Carrier route record
DLHNL→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Honolulu to Seattle
- Flights
- 789
- 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 Delta Air Lines.
Delta on HNL to SEA 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 789 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,426 at 71.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's HNL to SEA record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 120 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 778 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
75.2%
Every carrier on HNL to SEA, 2,942 flights
These figures cover 789 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
Delta against every carrier on HNL to SEA
Delta flew 789 of the 2,942 flights on HNL to SEA, about 27% of it. Its 89.6% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 75.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 89.6% to Hawaiian at 66.0%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 789 | 89.6% | 88 min | 1.39% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,426 | 71.9% | 62 min | 0.84% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 727 | 66.0% | 81 min | 0.55% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 71.9%, 6 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on HNL to SEA
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 14 points, against 6 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am43 flights97.7%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm270 flights85.0%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights84.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights93.6%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.7% of the time, against 84.0% for the afternoon window. That is 14 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on HNL to SEA through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 82.4%. June is the strongest month at 95.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 13 points. March was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.6% on time and Saturday the weakest at 86.5%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,093 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,093 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,093 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 97.7% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.39% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% 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 2,677 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 77.9% on time across 789 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. 789 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 Delta on HNL to SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 789 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 89.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 778 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to SEA, every carrier
- Delta on SEA to HNL, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SEA71.9%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to SEA66.0%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.