Carrier route record

ASITO→HNL

Alaska Airlines · Hilo to Honolulu

Flights: 2,266
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 36%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on ITO to HNL sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 2,266 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,857 at 93.9% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on ITO to HNL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

74.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,219 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.03%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.9%

Every carrier on ITO to HNL, 6,337 flights

These figures cover 2,266 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on ITO to HNL

Alaska flew 2,266 of the 6,337 flights on ITO to HNL, about 36% of it. Its 74.5% on time is 9 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 93.9% to Alaska at 74.5%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 93.9% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 84.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,214 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on ITO to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,857	93.9%	59 min	0.97%	A+
Hawaiian Airlines	2,214	84.9%	37 min	0.50%	B+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	2,266	74.5%	43 min	2.03%	C

Southwest leads Hawaiian by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am356 flights91.8%
8am–11am282 flights78.3%
11am–2pm452 flights74.6%
2pm–5pm473 flights65.4%
5pm–8pm508 flights67.3%
8pm–5am195 flights77.6%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 91.8% of the time, against 65.4% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 508 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on ITO to HNL through the year

Jan–Mar 20261,115 flights74.4%
Apr–Jun 20261,151 flights74.6%

Scale runs 65% 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 74.5% on time across 2,266 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on ITO to HNL logged 1,115 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 1,151 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 74.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 62.6%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 24,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
61%
Carrier
28%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
5%

61% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 24,208 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 2.03% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.04%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.0% 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 roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 216 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.5% on time across 2,269 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,266 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 Alaska on ITO to HNL

Put together: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid the peak month if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, Southwest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 26 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 2,219 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