Carrier route record

WNSAN→HNL

Southwest Airlines · San Diego to Honolulu

Flights: 729
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 41%
Carriers: 3

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

Southwest on SAN 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 roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Alaska Airlines, flew 552 at 69.1% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's SAN to HNL record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 42 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

81.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 714 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.82%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

72.1%

Every carrier on SAN to HNL, 1,768 flights

These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

Southwest against every carrier on SAN to HNL

Southwest flew 729 of the 1,768 flights on SAN to HNL, about 41% of it. Its 81.8% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 72.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. Alaska Airlines arrives on time 69.1% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on SAN to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines (this page)	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

Alaska leads Hawaiian by 8 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Southwest runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 20 points, against 8 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am58 flights93.0%
8am–11am306 flights87.0%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm124 flights80.3%
5pm–8pm241 flights73.2%
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 93.0% of the time, against 73.2% for the evening window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 306 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Southwest on SAN to HNL through the year

Darker means more delays. Figures are on-time percentages.August best, June worst

June is the worst month at 70.0% on time, 22 points below August, the best at 91.8%. 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. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.3% on time and Thursday the weakest at 72.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Southwest runs late on this route

Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,111 reported delay minutes.

Carrier
42%
Late-arriving aircraft
33%
National Airspace System
19%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 2,550 of the 6,111 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,111 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 93.0% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.82%, 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

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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 2,614 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 runs 84.4% on time across 729 flights, within 3 points 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. 729 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 SAN to HNL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 729 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 81.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 714 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