Route reliability record
PDX→HNL
Portland to Honolulu
- Flights
- 917
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,603 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 917 PDX to HNL flights, of which Alaska Airlines flew 453 at 65.5% on time.
Best time to fly PDX to HNL: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 76.7% of the time and Sunday flights 73.5%, against 62.1% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 155 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 904 completed flights
Avg delay
60 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.31%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
65.5% on time across 453 flights
These figures cover 917 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
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to HNL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 65.5% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 58.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 464 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 453 | 65.5% | 47 min | 1.55% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 464 | 58.7% | 71 min | 1.08% | D |
Alaska leads Hawaiian by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Portland to Honolulu
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. PDX → HNLPortland to Honolulu | Alaska Airlines | 64.5% | 65.5% | 1.55% | 5am–8am, Sun | — |
| 2. PDX → HNLPortland to Honolulu | Hawaiian Airlines | 58.1% | 58.7% | 1.08% | 11am–2pm, Sun | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 23 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am297 flights69.4%
- 8am–11am368 flights53.6%
- 11am–2pm43 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm209 flights63.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 76.7% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 53.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 368 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 43 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
April is the best month on the calendar at 84.9% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. July was the busiest month here, with 89 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 73.5% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 54.4%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 72% of the 20,000 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.
- 72%Carrier
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 2%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 72%, 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 15,000 of the 20,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 20,481 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.31% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.11%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.2% 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 about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,603 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 76.6% on time across 920 flights, 14 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 14 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 917 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HNL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 917 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 62.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 904 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
PDX to HNL questions
How often is PDX to HNL delayed?
Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 37.9% of the 917 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on PDX to HNL?
Alaska Airlines leads at 65.5% on time across 453 flights. Hawaiian Airlines is at the other end on 58.7%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on PDX to HNL?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 76.7% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 53.6%, 23 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are October delays on PDX to HNL?
October is the weakest month at 41.7% on time, compared with 84.9% in April. Across the year that is 43 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to PDX — the return legseparate record
- Portland International (PDX) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on PDX to HNL65.5%
- Hawaiian Airlines on PDX to HNL58.7%
- PDX to SEA, a related route84.8%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.7%
- PDX to LAX, a related route87.4%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record65.5%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record58.7%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. PDX to HNL and HNL to PDX are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.