Carrier route record

DLLAX→HNL

Delta Air Lines · Los Angeles to Honolulu

Flights: 1,095
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.

Delta on LAX to HNL lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,095 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 1,294 at 84.0% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the five carriers covered here at 84.0% on time across 1,294 flights.

On time

80.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,092 completed flights

Avg delay

83 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.27%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

76.2%

Every carrier on LAX to HNL, 5,540 flights

These figures cover 1,095 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.1% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.

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Carrier by carrier

Delta against every carrier on LAX to HNL

Delta flew 1,095 of the 5,540 flights on LAX to HNL, about 20% of it. Its 80.6% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to Alaska at 65.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 84.0% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 65.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,054 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines	1,294	84.0%	91 min	0.31%	B+
Delta Air Lines (this page)	1,095	80.6%	83 min	0.27%	B+
American Airlines	1,182	76.2%	61 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines	516	75.5%	47 min	0.19%	B+
Hawaiian Airlines	399	66.6%	99 min	1.75%	C
Alaska Airlines	1,054	65.9%	67 min	1.23%	C

The spread between United 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.

Flight by flight

Delta flight numbers on LAX to HNL

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Departure window

When Delta runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 18 points between the best and worst carrier.

5am–8am—
8am–11am365 flights82.2%
11am–2pm92 flights67.0%
2pm–5pm273 flights80.9%
5pm–8pm364 flights82.1%
8pm–5am1 flights—

Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 67.0% on time against 82.2% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Delta on LAX to HNL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.November best, April worst

November is the best month on the calendar at 92.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%, a spread of 5 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Delta on LAX to HNL runs when it is late

Delta on LAX to HNL often beats the schedule: 325 of 1,092 completed flights, 30%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 212 late arrivals split 72 under half an hour, 52 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 88 an hour or more.

15+ min early325 flights29.8%
Within 15 min555 flights50.8%
15–29 min late72 flights6.6%
30–59 min late52 flights4.8%
1–2 hours late42 flights3.8%
2+ hours late46 flights4.2%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 1,092 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

57 of 214 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 55 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at HNL.

The worst days

Worst days for Delta on LAX to HNL

The latest arrival of the period was on 27 June 2026, 11 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Delta on LAX to HNL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
27 June 2026	11 hours 11 minutes	Carrier
2 January 2026	10 hours 4 minutes	Carrier
14 August 2026	6 hours 15 minutes	Carrier
18 July 2026	5 hours 53 minutes	Extreme weather
24 September 2025	5 hours 52 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 74% of the 18,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
74%
Late-arriving aircraft
14%
National Airspace System
11%
Extreme weather
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 13,000 of the 18,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 17,510 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, below the national 1.89% 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

8.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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 2,556 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 87.8% on time across 1,095 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.

The sample behind these figures is 1,095 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 Delta on LAX to HNL

Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 92.2% on time and April 68.5%, a swing of 24 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of April before you think about anything else. 1,092 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures