Carrier route record
ASSEA→HNL
Alaska Airlines · Seattle to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,659
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 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 1,659 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 789 at 76.4% on time.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so Alaska on SEA to HNL runs 16 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 156 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
61.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,635 completed flights
Avg delay
68 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.2%
Every carrier on SEA to HNL, 2,927 flights
These figures cover 1,659 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.6% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Alaska against every carrier on SEA to HNL
Alaska flew 1,659 of the 2,927 flights on SEA to HNL, most of the route. Its 61.7% on time is 5 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 66.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.4% to Alaska at 61.7%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 76.4% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 64.9%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 479 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 (this page) | 1,659 | 61.7% | 68 min | 1.27% | D |
Delta leads Hawaiian by 12 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Alaska flight numbers on SEA to HNL
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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 35 points, against 12 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am201 flights71.5%
- 8am–11am396 flights69.3%
- 11am–2pm372 flights56.5%
- 2pm–5pm263 flights56.1%
- 5pm–8pm316 flights65.3%
- 8pm–5am111 flights36.4%
Scale runs 30% to 75%.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 36.4% on time, against 71.5% 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 46.9% on time, 30 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, Saturday is the strongest day at 68.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 55.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Alaska on SEA to HNL runs when it is late
The 626 late arrivals split 230 under half an hour, 223 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 173 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early329 flights20.1%
- Within 15 min680 flights41.6%
- 15–29 min late230 flights14.1%
- 30–59 min late223 flights13.6%
- 1–2 hours late98 flights6.0%
- 2+ hours late75 flights4.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,635 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
159 of 600 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 185 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at HNL.
The worst days
Worst days for Alaska on SEA to HNL
The latest arrival of the period was on 13 February 2026, 16 hours 50 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in April 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 13 February 2026 | 16 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 15 April 2026 | 16 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
| 4 April 2026 | 16 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 19 April 2026 | 12 hours 5 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 March 2026 | 11 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 62% of the 42,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 62%Carrier
- 24%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
The largest share of delay minutes, 62%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 26,000 of the 42,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 42,260 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.27% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
10.6% 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 71.1% on time across 1,663 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 1,659 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 46.9%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,635 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 HNL76.4%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SEA to HNL64.9%
- 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 7.05 million flight records
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.