Carrier route record

ASPHX→HNL

Alaska Airlines · Phoenix to Honolulu

Flights: 181
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 14%
Carriers: 4

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

Alaska on PHX to HNL lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 181 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 365 at 82.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's PHX to HNL record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 180 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.55%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

81.4%

Every carrier on PHX to HNL, 1,317 flights

These figures cover 181 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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

Alaska against every carrier on PHX to HNL

Alaska flew 181 of the 1,317 flights on PHX to HNL, about 14% of it. Its 81.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Hawaiian at 85.9% to American at 79.6%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The two carriers here are closely matched: 2 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample	184	85.9%	147 min	0.00%	A+
Southwest Airlines	365	82.0%	37 min	0.00%	B+
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	181	81.7%	59 min	0.55%	B+
American Airlines	587	79.6%	78 min	0.17%	B+

No carrier stands out. Southwest tops the table at 82.0%, 2 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.

Departure window

When Alaska 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 181 flights.

5am–8am111 flights79.3%
8am–11am70 flights85.5%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 85.5% on time for the 8am–11am window against 79.3% for 5am–8am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 111 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on PHX to HNL through the year

Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.2%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights81.1%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 81.7% on time across 181 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on PHX to HNL logged 90 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 91 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 81.7% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 90% of the 1,954 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
90%
National Airspace System
7%
Extreme weather
3%

The largest share of delay minutes, 90%, 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 1,757 of the 1,954 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,954 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.55%, 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

5.0% 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 2,917 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 80.7% on time across 181 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 181 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 Alaska on PHX to HNL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 181 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 81.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 180 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