Carrier route record

ASHNL→SMF

Alaska Airlines · Honolulu to Sacramento

Flights: 181
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on HNL to SMF sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 8 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land an hour and a half behind schedule. That rests on 181 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes late.

The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on HNL to SMF runs 8 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 82 extra late arrivals.

On time

69.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 180 completed flights

Avg delay

85 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.5%

Every carrier on HNL to SMF, 730 flights

These figures cover 181 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on HNL to SMF

Alaska flew 181 of the 730 flights on HNL to SMF, about 25% of it. Its 69.4% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.1% to Alaska 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.

On-time performance by carrier on HNL to SMF
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	365	85.1%	48 min	0.27%	A+
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample	184	70.5%	57 min	0.00%	C+
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	181	69.4%	85 min	0.00%	C+

Departure window

When Alaska 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 181 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's HNL to SMF record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 69.4% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on HNL to SMF through the year

Jan–Mar 202690 flights65.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights73.6%

Scale runs 55% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 69.4% on time across 181 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on HNL to SMF logged 90 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 69.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 82% of the 4,687 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

Carrier
82%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
National Airspace System
2%
Extreme weather
1%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 82%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,856 of the 4,687 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 4,687 reported delay minutes.

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

8.9% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 2,462 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 76.8% on time across 181 flights, 7 points above 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. 181 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 Alaska on HNL to SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 181 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 69.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 180 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures