Carrier route record

WNPHX→HNL

Southwest Airlines · Phoenix to Honolulu

Flights: 365
Period: September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route: 28%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 35 minutes on average. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Southwest on PHX to HNL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

81.0%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 363 completed flights

Avg delay

36 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

79.4%

Every carrier on PHX to HNL, 1,317 flights

These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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.

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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 81.0% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Hawaiian at 83.6% to American at 77.6%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on PHX to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample	122	83.6%	85 min	0.00%	B+
Southwest Airlines (this page)	365	81.0%	36 min	0.00%	B+
Alaska Airlinesthin sample	243	78.9%	55 min	0.41%	B+
American Airlines	587	77.6%	80 min	0.51%	B+

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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 81.0% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Southwest on PHX 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 40.0%. January is the strongest month at 90.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 50 points. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.

Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 88.2% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 76.5%, a spread of 12 points.

Arrival by arrival

How late Southwest on PHX to HNL runs when it is late

Southwest on PHX to HNL often beats the schedule: 112 of 363 completed flights, 31%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 42 of the 69 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 8 reached an hour or more.

15+ min early112 flights30.9%
Within 15 min182 flights50.1%
15–29 min late42 flights11.6%
30–59 min late19 flights5.2%
1–2 hours late6 flights1.7%
2+ hours late2 flights0.6%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 363 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

A late pushback is often recovered here: of 48 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 18 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 39 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at HNL.

The worst days

Worst days for Southwest on PHX to HNL

The latest arrival of the period was on 20 June 2026, 3 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of Southwest on PHX to HNL in the period
Date	Arrived late by	Largest filed cause
20 June 2026	3 hours 36 minutes	Carrier
12 October 2025	2 hours 34 minutes	Late-arriving aircraft
16 October 2025	1 hour 35 minutes	Carrier
9 July 2026	1 hour 27 minutes	Carrier
24 November 2025	1 hour 24 minutes	Carrier

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 46% of the 2,488 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

Carrier
46%
National Airspace System
43%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%

The largest share of delay minutes, 46%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,138 of the 2,488 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,488 reported delay minutes.

43% 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 1,072 minutes out of 2,488, against a national NAS share of 21%.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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 8.3% 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 91.2% on time across 365 flights, 10 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 10 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 81.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 363 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated 22 October 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures