Carrier route record
WNPHX→HNL
Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Honolulu
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on PHX to HNL lands a B+, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 35 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's PHX to HNL record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 44 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 361 completed flights
Avg delay
37 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on PHX to HNL, 1,317 flights
These figures cover 365 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
Southwest against every carrier on PHX to HNL
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,317 flights on PHX to HNL, about 28% of it. Its 82.0% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Hawaiian at 85.9% to American at 79.6%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 85.9% | 147 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 365 | 82.0% | 37 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 81.7% | 59 min | 0.55% | B+ |
| American Airlines | 587 | 79.6% | 78 min | 0.17% | B+ |
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.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Southwest's PHX to HNL record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 82.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Southwest on PHX to HNL through the year
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 40.0%. August is the strongest month at 93.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 53 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 74.5%. 14 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 49% of the 2,390 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.
- 49%Carrier
- 37%National Airspace System
- 14%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 1,173 of the 2,390 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,390 reported delay minutes.
37% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 881 minutes out of 2,390, against a national NAS share of 21%.
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 2,917 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 93.9% on time across 365 flights, 12 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 12 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 PHX 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 82.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 361 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- PHX to HNL, every carrier
- Southwest on HNL to PHX, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on PHX to HNL85.9%
- Alaska Airlines on PHX to HNL81.7%
- American Airlines on PHX to HNL79.6%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.