Carrier route record
UALAX→HNL
United Airlines · Los Angeles to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,268
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LAX to HNL earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 1,268 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 517 at 81.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to HNL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,261 completed flights
Avg delay
97 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.39%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
76.9%
Every carrier on LAX to HNL, 5,459 flights
These figures cover 1,268 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
United against every carrier on LAX to HNL
United flew 1,268 of the 5,459 flights on LAX to HNL, about 23% of it. Its 84.5% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 76.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Hawaiian at 63.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 81.6% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 63.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 619 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,268 | 84.5% | 97 min | 0.39% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 517 | 81.6% | 51 min | 0.19% | B+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 1,095 | 80.7% | 75 min | 0.37% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 1,183 | 76.7% | 57 min | 0.17% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 777 | 67.1% | 72 min | 0.90% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 619 | 63.2% | 82 min | 1.29% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Hawaiian 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
United flight numbers on LAX to HNL
Departure window
When United 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 1,268 flights.
- 5am–8am11 flights—
- 8am–11am387 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm397 flights84.1%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm473 flights82.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 88.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 82.0% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5pm–8pm window is the busiest, with 473 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LAX to HNL through the year
July is the worst month at 76.3% on time, 17 points below May, the best at 93.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. June was the busiest month here, with 159 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.2%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 19,000 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.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
63% 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 19,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 63 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 18,965 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 88.3% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.39%, 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
6.7% 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 2,556 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 runs 87.4% on time across 1,268 flights, within 3 points 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 1,268 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 United on LAX to HNL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 93.1% on time and July 76.3%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,261 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to HNL, every carrier
- United on HNL to LAX, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to HNL81.6%
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to HNL80.7%
- American Airlines on LAX to HNL76.7%
- Alaska Airlines on LAX to HNL67.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines on LAX to HNL63.2%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.