Carrier route record
HAHNL→SEA
Hawaiian Airlines · Honolulu to Seattle
- Flights
- 479
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Hawaiian Airlines.
Hawaiian on HNL to SEA draws a C+. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 479 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 789 at 88.7% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Hawaiian on HNL to SEA runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 121 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
65.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 474 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.63%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on HNL to SEA, 2,931 flights
These figures cover 479 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Hawaiian against every carrier on HNL to SEA
Hawaiian flew 479 of the 2,931 flights on HNL to SEA, about 16% of it. Its 65.2% on time is 10 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.7% to Hawaiian at 65.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.7% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 71.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,663 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 789 | 88.7% | 76 min | 1.01% | A |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,663 | 71.1% | 62 min | 1.26% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlines (this page) | 479 | 65.2% | 97 min | 0.63% | C+ |
The spread between Delta and Alaska is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
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 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 17 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am40 flights65.0%
- 8am–11am81 flights61.2%
- 11am–2pm78 flights53.9%
- 2pm–5pm43 flights60.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am237 flights71.1%
Scale runs 45% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 53.9% on time against 71.1% for 8pm–5am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 237 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Hawaiian on HNL to SEA through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025120 flights68.3%
- Oct–Dec 2025359 flights64.1%
Scale runs 55% to 75%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 65.2% on time across 479 flights.
Split by quarter, Hawaiian on HNL to SEA logged 120 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 359 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 65.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 73.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 59.7%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Hawaiian on HNL to SEA runs when it is late
The 165 late arrivals split 69 under half an hour, 43 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 53 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early64 flights13.5%
- Within 15 min245 flights51.7%
- 15–29 min late69 flights14.6%
- 30–59 min late43 flights9.1%
- 1–2 hours late22 flights4.6%
- 2+ hours late31 flights6.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 474 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
33 of 149 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. In the other direction, 49 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SEA.
The worst days
Worst days for Hawaiian on HNL to SEA
The latest arrival of the period was on 24 December 2025, 10 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Five of the five worst days fell in December 2025.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 24 December 2025 | 10 hours 13 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 December 2025 | 10 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 December 2025 | 9 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 December 2025 | 9 hours 33 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 9 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Hawaiian runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 81% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 81%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 81%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 16,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 15,957 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.63%, below the national 1.89% 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
11.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 runs 64.9% on time across 479 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 479 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 SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 479 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 65.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 474 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to SEA, every carrier
- Hawaiian on SEA to HNL, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on HNL to SEA88.7%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SEA71.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.