Carrier route record

HAKOA→HNL

Hawaiian Airlines · Kailua-Kona to Honolulu

Flights: 2,727
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 37%
Carriers: 3

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

Hawaiian on KOA to HNL 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 2,727 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,770 at 95.3% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Hawaiian's KOA to HNL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 88 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

86.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,708 completed flights

Avg delay

43 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.66%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.1%

Every carrier on KOA to HNL, 7,280 flights

These figures cover 2,727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 2 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

Hawaiian against every carrier on KOA to HNL

Hawaiian flew 2,727 of the 7,280 flights on KOA to HNL, about 37% of it. Its 86.4% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 95.3% to Alaska at 77.4%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 95.3% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 77.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,783 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on KOA to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,770	95.3%	59 min	1.19%	A
Hawaiian Airlines (this page)	2,727	86.4%	43 min	0.66%	A+
Alaska Airlines	2,783	77.4%	46 min	1.80%	B

The spread between Southwest and Alaska is 18 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 18 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Hawaiian runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am308 flights93.1%
8am–11am407 flights92.1%
11am–2pm538 flights85.7%
2pm–5pm650 flights82.9%
5pm–8pm560 flights83.6%
8pm–5am264 flights86.4%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.1% of the time, against 82.9% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 650 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Hawaiian on KOA to HNL through the year

Jul–Sep 20251,391 flights90.0%
Oct–Dec 20251,336 flights82.7%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 86.4% on time across 2,727 flights.

Split by quarter, Hawaiian on KOA to HNL logged 1,391 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 1,336 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 86.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 91.5% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.9%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Hawaiian runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 64% of the 16,000 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
64%
Carrier
29%
Extreme weather
4%
National Airspace System
3%
Security
0%

64% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 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 15,750 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 93.1% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.66%, 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 2.3% 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 163 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 runs 87.6% on time across 2,727 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 2,727 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 Hawaiian on KOA 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 18 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 2,708 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