Route reliability record
SAN→HNL
San Diego to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,768
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,614 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 1,768 SAN to HNL flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 729 at 81.8% on time.
Best time to fly SAN to HNL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Tuesday flights 77.0%, against 72.1% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 81.8% on time across 729 flights.
Key figures
On time
72.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,719 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.24%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
81.8% on time across 729 flights
These figures cover 1,768 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 SAN to HNL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 81.8% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 60.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 487 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 729 | 81.8% | 47 min | 0.82% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 552 | 69.1% | 65 min | 1.45% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 487 | 60.8% | 78 min | 1.64% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Hawaiian is 21 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 21 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly San Diego 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. SAN → HNLSan Diego to Honolulu | Southwest Airlines | 81.1% | 81.8% | 0.82% | 5am–8am, Tue | — |
| 2. SAN → HNLSan Diego to Honolulu | Alaska Airlines | 68.1% | 69.1% | 1.45% | 2pm–5pm, Thu | — |
| 3. SAN → HNLSan Diego to Honolulu | Hawaiian Airlines | 59.8% | 60.8% | 1.64% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
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 28 points, against 21 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am59 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am673 flights71.2%
- 11am–2pm213 flights63.5%
- 2pm–5pm264 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm559 flights70.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 63.5% on time against 91.4% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 673 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
July is the worst month at 56.9% on time, 23 points below May, the best at 79.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. December was the busiest month here, with 156 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 77.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.9%. 9 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 58% of the 31,000 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.
- 58%Carrier
- 28%Late-arriving aircraft
- 8%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, 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 18,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 31,229 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.24% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 1.53%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.3% 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 2,614 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 77.8% on time across 1,765 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,768 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HNL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. May runs 79.9% on time and July 56.9%, a swing of 23 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,719 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SAN to HNL questions
How often is SAN to HNL delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 27.9% of the 1,768 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SAN to HNL?
Southwest Airlines leads at 81.8% on time across 729 flights. Hawaiian Airlines is at the other end on 60.8%, a gap of 21 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 SAN to HNL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 63.5%, 28 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 July delays on SAN to HNL?
July is the weakest month at 56.9% on time, compared with 79.9% in May. Across the year that is 23 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 SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to HNL81.8%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to HNL69.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SAN to HNL60.8%
- SAN to SFO, a related route65.0%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.7%
- SAN to DEN, a related route79.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record81.8%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record69.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record60.8%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. SAN to HNL and HNL to SAN 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.