Carrier route record
UASFO→HNL
United Airlines · San Francisco to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,779
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to HNL earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,779 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to HNL record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,776 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.11%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
80.0%
Every carrier on SFO to HNL, 2,477 flights
These figures cover 1,779 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
United against every carrier on SFO to HNL
United flew 1,779 of the 2,477 flights on SFO to HNL, most of the route. Its 84.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 80.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.5% to Alaska at 67.1%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 1,779 | 84.5% | 63 min | 0.11% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 216 | 71.0% | 68 min | 3.70% | C− |
| Alaska Airlines | 482 | 67.1% | 57 min | 2.90% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to HNL
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Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am102 flights96.1%
- 8am–11am500 flights85.3%
- 11am–2pm262 flights83.2%
- 2pm–5pm551 flights79.6%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights88.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 96.1% of the time, against 79.6% for the afternoon window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 551 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to HNL through the year
August is the worst month at 71.9% on time, 27 points below November, the best at 98.4%. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 217 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 80.4%, a spread of 7 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SFO to HNL runs when it is late
United on SFO to HNL often beats the schedule: 657 of 1,776 completed flights, 37%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 276 late arrivals split 124 under half an hour, 71 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 81 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early657 flights37.0%
- Within 15 min843 flights47.5%
- 15–29 min late124 flights7.0%
- 30–59 min late71 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late44 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late37 flights2.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 1,776 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 362 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 159 still arrived on time. 73 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SFO to HNL
The latest arrival of the period was on 9 March 2026, 8 hours 25 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 9 March 2026 | 8 hours 25 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 December 2025 | 8 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 January 2026 | 7 hours 31 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 27 August 2026 | 6 hours 37 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 August 2026 | 6 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 17,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 17,451 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 6,670 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.11%, 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 4.6% 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 2,398 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 runs 85.1% on time across 1,779 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,779 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 United on SFO to HNL
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. November runs 98.4% on time and August 71.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of August before you think about anything else. 1,776 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- SFO to HNL, every carrier
- United on HNL to SFO, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on SFO to HNL71.0%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to HNL67.1%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.