Route reliability record
SEA→HNL
Seattle to Honolulu
- Flights
- 2,927
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,677 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route draws a C. About 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 2,927 SEA to HNL flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 789 at 76.4% on time.
Best time to fly SEA to HNL: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 74.9% of the time and Wednesday flights 70.6%, against 66.2% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 76.4% on time across 789 flights.
Key figures
On time
66.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,880 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.13%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
76.4% on time across 789 flights
These figures cover 2,927 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to HNL
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 76.4% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 61.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,659 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 789 | 76.4% | 53 min | 0.38% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 479 | 64.9% | 100 min | 1.88% | D |
| Alaska Airlines | 1,659 | 61.7% | 68 min | 1.27% | D |
The spread between Delta and Alaska is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Flight by flight
Flights on SEA to HNL
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Seattle 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. SEA → HNLSeattle to Honolulu | Delta Air Lines | 76.1% | 76.4% | 0.38% | 8am–11am, Wed | DL 351 08:25 |
| 2. SEA → HNLSeattle to Honolulu | Hawaiian Airlines | 63.7% | 64.9% | 1.88% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
| 3. SEA → HNLSeattle to Honolulu | Alaska Airlines | 60.9% | 61.7% | 1.27% | 5am–8am, Sat | AS 626 10:55 |
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 31 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am365 flights72.7%
- 8am–11am752 flights74.9%
- 11am–2pm521 flights58.6%
- 2pm–5pm621 flights64.9%
- 5pm–8pm502 flights65.1%
- 8pm–5am166 flights44.4%
Scale runs 35% to 80%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 44.4% on time, against 74.9% for the 8am–11am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 752 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SEA to HNL by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SEA to HNL, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 74.9% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 44.4%, a wide gap of 30.5 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am72.7%
- 8–11am74.9%
- 11am–2pm58.6%
- 2–5pm64.9%
- 5–8pm65.1%
- 8pm–5am44.4%
best all US flightsScale 35% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 26 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.
October is the best month on the calendar at 77.6% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 260 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 70.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 59.4%, a spread of 11 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 65% of the 68,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 65%Carrier
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 65%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 44,000 of the 68,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 68,495 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.13% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.48%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.2% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
At 2,677 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 74.9% on time across 2,931 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,927 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. October runs 77.6% on time and March 51.6%, a swing of 26 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 2,880 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SEA to HNL questions
How often is SEA to HNL delayed?
About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 33.8% of the 2,927 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on SEA to HNL?
Delta Air Lines leads at 76.4% on time across 789 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 61.7%, a gap of 15 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 SEA to HNL?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 74.9% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 44.4%, 31 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 March delays on SEA to HNL?
March is the weakest month at 51.6% on time, compared with 77.6% in October. Across the year that is 26 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 SEA — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to HNL76.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SEA to HNL64.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to HNL61.7%
- SEA to LAX, a related route82.0%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.1%
- SEA to PHX, a related route78.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record76.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record64.9%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record61.7%
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. SEA to HNL and HNL to SEA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.