Carrier route record

WNLGB→HNL

Southwest Airlines · Long Beach to Honolulu

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 LGB to HNL earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's LGB to HNL record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 134 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights

Avg delay

57 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

89.0%

Every carrier on LGB to HNL, 730 flights

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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 LGB to HNL

Southwest flew 365 of the 730 flights on LGB to HNL, most of the route. Its 91.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 89.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 91.0% to Alaska at 86.7%. 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 LGB to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	365	91.0%	57 min	0.00%	A+
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample	184	87.4%	52 min	0.54%	A+
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	181	86.7%	44 min	0.00%	A+

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–8am190 flights91.1%
8am–11am175 flights90.9%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 5am–8am window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The full set of windows spans half a point.

Across the year

Southwest on LGB to HNL through the year

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

Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 70.0%. January is the strongest month at 100.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 30 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 88.5%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 75% of the 1,882 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.

Carrier
75%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
4%
Late-arriving aircraft
2%

The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 1,409 of the 1,882 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,882 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 2.2% 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 2,569 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 85.6% on time across 365 flights, 5 points below 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.

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 LGB to HNL

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 91.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 365 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