Carrier route record
DLHNL→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Honolulu to Seattle
- Flights
- 789
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 789 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 1,663 at 71.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's HNL to SEA record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 114 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 781 completed flights
Avg delay
76 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on HNL to SEA, 2,931 flights
These figures cover 789 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on HNL to SEA
Delta flew 789 of the 2,931 flights on HNL to SEA, about 27% of it. Its 88.7% on time is 14 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.7% to Hawaiian at 65.2%.
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 | 88.7% | 76 min | 1.01% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,663 | 71.1% | 62 min | 1.26% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 479 | 65.2% | 97 min | 0.63% | C+ |
No carrier stands out. Alaska tops the table at 71.1%, 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
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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.
- 5am–8am43 flights97.7%
- 8am–11am16 flights—
- 11am–2pm270 flights84.6%
- 2pm–5pm95 flights84.0%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am365 flights92.0%
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
August is the worst month at 75.8% on time, 19 points below July, the best at 95.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. March was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 92.1% on time and Monday the weakest at 85.3%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on HNL to SEA runs when it is late
Delta on HNL to SEA often beats the schedule: 363 of 781 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 88 late arrivals split 42 under half an hour, 19 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 27 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early363 flights46.5%
- Within 15 min330 flights42.3%
- 15–29 min late42 flights5.4%
- 30–59 min late19 flights2.4%
- 1–2 hours late13 flights1.7%
- 2+ hours late14 flights1.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 781 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
19 of 69 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 28% of them. 38 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on HNL to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 April 2026, 13 hours 1 minute behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as national airspace system delay. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 April 2026 | 13 hours 1 minute | National Airspace System |
| 10 September 2025 | 11 hours 10 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 10 hours 1 minute | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 March 2026 | 4 hours 21 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 April 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 6,667 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 28%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,667 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 6,667 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 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 76.4% 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 88.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 781 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 SEA71.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to SEA65.2%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.