Carrier route record

WNHNL→SMF

Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Sacramento

Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 50%
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 SMF 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to SMF record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 75 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

85.1%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

48 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

77.5%

Every carrier on HNL to SMF, 730 flights

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on HNL to SMF

Southwest flew 365 of the 730 flights on HNL to SMF, most of the route. Its 85.1% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 77.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 85.1% to Alaska at 69.4%. 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.

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

5am–8am—
8am–11am—
11am–2pm285 flights85.9%
2pm–5pm80 flights82.5%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 85.9% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.

Across the year

Southwest on HNL to SMF through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, March worst

Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 67.7%. August is the strongest month at 96.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 29 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.4%. 8 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 2,599 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
40%
Late-arriving aircraft
31%
National Airspace System
29%

The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 1,046 of the 2,599 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,599 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.3% 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 2,462 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 runs 86.6% on time across 365 flights, within 2 points 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. 365 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 SMF

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 85.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 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