Carrier route record
UAHNL→SFO
United Airlines · Honolulu to San Francisco
- Flights
- 1,779
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on HNL to SFO earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,779 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's HNL to SFO record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 78 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
85.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,767 completed flights
Avg delay
64 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.62%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.8%
Every carrier on HNL to SFO, 2,476 flights
These figures cover 1,779 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
United against every carrier on HNL to SFO
United flew 1,779 of the 2,476 flights on HNL to SFO, most of the route. Its 85.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 85.1% to Hawaiian at 69.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,779 | 85.1% | 64 min | 0.62% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 480 | 69.8% | 58 min | 2.08% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 217 | 69.4% | 54 min | 4.15% | C− |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on HNL to SFO
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Departure window
When United 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 half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am239 flights89.5%
- 8am–11am312 flights94.2%
- 11am–2pm342 flights77.4%
- 2pm–5pm369 flights76.9%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am498 flights90.0%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 94.2% of the time, against 76.9% for the afternoon window. That is 17 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 498 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on HNL to SFO through the year
June is the worst month at 76.1% on time, 15 points below October, the best at 91.1%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 217 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 79.4%, a spread of 11 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on HNL to SFO runs when it is late
United on HNL to SFO often beats the schedule: 571 of 1,767 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 133 of the 263 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 52 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early571 flights32.3%
- Within 15 min933 flights52.8%
- 15–29 min late133 flights7.5%
- 30–59 min late78 flights4.4%
- 1–2 hours late28 flights1.6%
- 2+ hours late24 flights1.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,767 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 241 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 77 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 99 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 SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for United on HNL to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 22 February 2026, 17 hours 24 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 22 February 2026 | 17 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 September 2025 | 17 hours 20 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 July 2026 | 15 hours 56 minutes | Carrier |
| 22 May 2026 | 11 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 June 2026 | 9 hours 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 52% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Carrier
- 31%Late-arriving aircraft
- 17%National Airspace System
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 52%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 8,676 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 16,743 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.2% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.62%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.9% 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 2,398 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 84.5% on time across 1,779 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,779 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.
What to do with this
Booking United on HNL to SFO
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 91.1% on time and June 76.1%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,767 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to HNL, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SFO69.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to SFO69.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.