Carrier route record
DLSEA→HNL
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Honolulu
- Flights
- 789
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 27%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SEA to HNL lands a B+, about a point worse than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That rests on 789 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Hawaiian Airlines, flew 479 at 64.9% on time.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on SEA to HNL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
76.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 775 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.38%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
66.2%
Every carrier on SEA to HNL, 2,927 flights
These figures cover 789 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 3 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on SEA to HNL
Delta flew 789 of the 2,927 flights on SEA to HNL, about 27% of it. Its 76.4% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 66.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 76.4% to Alaska at 61.7%.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 3 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 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 |
No carrier stands out. Hawaiian tops the table at 64.9%, 3 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SEA to HNL
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Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 points, against 3 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am122 flights79.7%
- 8am–11am243 flights85.5%
- 11am–2pm90 flights64.4%
- 2pm–5pm240 flights70.3%
- 5pm–8pm94 flights75.3%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 64.4% on time against 85.5% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 243 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on SEA to HNL through the year
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 57.0%. January is the strongest month at 84.8%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 28 points. March was the busiest month here, with 83 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.7% on time and Friday the weakest at 69.6%, a spread of 18 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SEA to HNL runs when it is late
Delta on SEA to HNL often beats the schedule: 249 of 775 completed flights, 32%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 183 late arrivals split 87 under half an hour, 58 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 38 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early249 flights32.1%
- Within 15 min343 flights44.3%
- 15–29 min late87 flights11.2%
- 30–59 min late58 flights7.5%
- 1–2 hours late20 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late18 flights2.3%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 775 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
26 of 95 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 27% of them. In the other direction, 114 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 Delta on SEA to HNL
The latest arrival of the period was on 7 April 2026, 4 hours 43 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 7 April 2026 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Carrier |
| 25 February 2026 | 4 hours 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 November 2025 | 4 hours 32 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 April 2026 | 4 hours 30 minutes | Carrier |
| 24 January 2026 | 4 hours 29 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta 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 9,686 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 39%National Airspace System
- 19%Late-arriving aircraft
- 0%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,062 of the 9,686 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 9,686 reported delay minutes.
39% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 3,730 minutes out of 9,686, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.38%, below the national 1.89% 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 4.9% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 2,677 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 88.7% on time across 789 flights, 12 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 12 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 789 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 Delta on SEA to HNL
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 789 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 76.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 775 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SEA to HNL, every carrier
- Delta on HNL to SEA, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on SEA to HNL64.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SEA to HNL61.7%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.