Carrier route record
WNHNL→SJC
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to San Jose
- Flights
- 445
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on HNL to SJC 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 roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 445 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to SJC record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 112 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 443 completed flights
Avg delay
42 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on HNL to SJC, 808 flights
These figures cover 445 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to SJC
Southwest flew 445 of the 808 flights on HNL to SJC, most of the route. Its 88.5% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 88.5% to Alaska at 72.4%. Two 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 445 | 88.5% | 42 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 120 | 73.1% | 55 min | 0.00% | C+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 243 | 72.4% | 56 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 445 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am270 flights89.2%
- 11am–2pm156 flights89.7%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 89.7% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to SJC through the year
May is the best month on the calendar at 96.8% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 93.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.4%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on HNL to SJC runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 32 of the 51 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 10 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early103 flights23.3%
- Within 15 min289 flights65.2%
- 15–29 min late32 flights7.2%
- 30–59 min late9 flights2.0%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights1.8%
- 2+ hours late2 flights0.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 443 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
6 of 32 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 19% of them. In the other direction, 25 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 SJC.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on HNL to SJC
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 March 2026, 5 hours 5 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 March 2026 | 5 hours 5 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 March 2026 | 3 hours 44 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 April 2026 | 1 hour 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 November 2025 | 1 hour 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 18 August 2026 | 1 hour 23 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest 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 2,132 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 27%Carrier
- 1%Security
41% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,132 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 to one. The split is drawn from 2,132 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 2.3% 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 2,417 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 75.6% on time across 445 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 445 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 Southwest on HNL to SJC
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 445 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 88.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 443 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to SJC, every carrier
- Southwest on SJC to HNL, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to SJC73.1%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SJC72.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International (SJC) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.