Carrier route record
HASAN→HNL
Hawaiian Airlines · San Diego to Honolulu
- Flights
- 487
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Hawaiian Airlines.
Hawaiian on SAN to HNL draws a D. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is a little over an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 487 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 729 at 81.8% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Hawaiian on SAN to HNL runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 168 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 475 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
72.1%
Every carrier on SAN to HNL, 1,768 flights
These figures cover 487 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Hawaiian against every carrier on SAN to HNL
Hawaiian flew 487 of the 1,768 flights on SAN to HNL, about 28% of it. Its 60.8% on time is 11 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 81.8% to Hawaiian at 60.8%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 81.8% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 69.1%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 552 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 (this page) | 487 | 60.8% | 78 min | 1.64% | D |
The spread between Southwest and Alaska is 13 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 13 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Hawaiian runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 13 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am1 flights—
- 8am–11am185 flights55.6%
- 11am–2pm158 flights66.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm143 flights62.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 66.0% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 55.6%. 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 185 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Hawaiian on SAN to HNL through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025250 flights55.2%
- Oct–Dec 2025237 flights67.0%
Scale runs 45% to 70%. 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 60.8% on time across 487 flights.
Split by quarter, Hawaiian on SAN to HNL logged 250 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 237 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 60.8% annual figure is the one to use.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 71.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 53.5%. 18 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Hawaiian runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 69% of the 14,000 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.
- 69%Carrier
- 25%Late-arriving aircraft
- 4%Extreme weather
- 2%National Airspace System
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 69%, 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 9,917 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,425 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.82%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.9% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 70.5% on time across 485 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. 487 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 Hawaiian on SAN to HNL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 487 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 60.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 475 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SAN to HNL, every carrier
- Hawaiian on HNL to SAN, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to HNL81.8%
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to HNL69.1%
- Hawaiian Airlines network-wide record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- 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
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.