Carrier route record

HASEA→HNL

Hawaiian Airlines · Seattle to Honolulu

Flights: 727
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 25%
Carriers: 3

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

Hawaiian on SEA to HNL earns a D, which is as low as this site's scale goes for a reason. Only 57.5% of flights arrive inside the 15-minute window, 20 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. Late arrivals average an hour and a half. Treat any tight connection here as a coin flip. That rests on 727 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 Hawaiian on SEA to HNL runs 20 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 201 extra late arrivals.

On time

57.5%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 716 completed flights

Avg delay

89 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.51%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

65.5%

Every carrier on SEA to HNL, 2,938 flights

These figures cover 727 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 12.6% 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

Hawaiian against every carrier on SEA to HNL

Hawaiian flew 727 of the 2,938 flights on SEA to HNL, about 25% of it. Its 57.5% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 65.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last 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; Alaska Airlines manages 62.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 1,422 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on SEA to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines	789	77.9%	56 min	0.76%	B+
Alaska Airlines	1,422	62.7%	66 min	0.84%	D+
Hawaiian Airlines (this page)	727	57.5%	89 min	1.51%	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.

Departure window

When Hawaiian runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 39 points, against 15 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am42 flights58.5%
8am–11am175 flights72.4%
11am–2pm121 flights55.6%
2pm–5pm180 flights62.2%
5pm–8pm92 flights53.8%
8pm–5am117 flights33.3%

Scale runs 25% to 80%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 33.3% on time, against 72.4% 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 180 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Hawaiian on SEA to HNL through the year

Jul–Sep 2025368 flights51.8%
Oct–Dec 2025359 flights63.5%

Scale runs 45% to 70%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 57.5% on time across 727 flights.

Split by quarter, Hawaiian on SEA to HNL logged 368 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 359 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 57.5% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 61.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 51.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Hawaiian runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 85% of the 27,000 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.

Carrier
85%
Late-arriving aircraft
13%
National Airspace System
1%
Security
1%
Extreme weather
0%

The largest share of delay minutes, 85%, 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 27,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 26,911 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.51% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

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. 12.6% 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 66.0% on time across 727 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.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 727 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 Hawaiian on SEA to HNL

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 727 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 57.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 716 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