Carrier route record
ASSEA→HNL
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,422
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 48%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on SEA to HNL draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 1,422 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 789 at 77.9% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so Alaska on SEA to HNL runs 15 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 149 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
62.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,407 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
65.5%
Every carrier on SEA to HNL, 2,938 flights
These figures cover 1,422 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.7% 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
Alaska against every carrier on SEA to HNL
Alaska flew 1,422 of the 2,938 flights on SEA to HNL, about 48% of it. Its 62.7% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 77.9% to Hawaiian at 57.5%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 77.9% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 57.5%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 727 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 789 | 77.9% | 56 min | 0.76% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 1,422 | 62.7% | 66 min | 0.84% | D+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 727 | 57.5% | 89 min | 1.51% | D |
The spread between Delta and Hawaiian is 20 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 20 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Departure window
When Alaska 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 20 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am188 flights69.5%
- 8am–11am396 flights64.6%
- 11am–2pm261 flights62.0%
- 2pm–5pm201 flights56.6%
- 5pm–8pm327 flights62.5%
- 8pm–5am49 flights50.0%
Scale runs 40% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 50.0% on time, against 69.5% for the 5am–8am 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 396 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on SEA to HNL through the year
July is the worst month at 43.3% on time, 34 points below October, the best at 77.0%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 185 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 67.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 52.5%. 15 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 68% of the 35,000 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.
- 68%Carrier
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 68%, 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 23,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 34,731 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 9.7% 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 2,677 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 71.9% on time across 1,426 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 1,422 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.
What to do with this
Booking Alaska on SEA to HNL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 77.0% on time and July 43.3%, a swing of 34 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,407 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to HNL, every carrier
- Alaska on HNL to SEA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on SEA to HNL77.9%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SEA to HNL57.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) 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.