Carrier route record
WNHNL→SJC
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to San Jose
- Flights
- 446
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 55%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 446 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to SJC record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 114 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 444 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.5%
Every carrier on HNL to SJC, 809 flights
These figures cover 446 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to SJC
Southwest flew 446 of the 809 flights on HNL to SJC, most of the route. Its 89.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 89.0% to Alaska at 74.6%. 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) | 446 | 89.0% | 43 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 182 | 78.9% | 55 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 74.6% | 59 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 446 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am269 flights89.9%
- 11am–2pm158 flights89.9%
- 2pm–5pm19 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 89.9% 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, Monday is the strongest day at 93.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.4%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 2,082 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 31%National Airspace System
39% 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 2,082 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 39 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 2,082 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 89.9% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 2.0% 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 2,417 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 82.2% on time across 446 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 446 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. 446 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 89.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 444 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 SJC78.9%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to SJC74.6%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.