Carrier route record
UASFO→HNL
United Airlines · San Francisco to Honolulu
- Flights
- 1,742
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 72%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on SFO to HNL earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,742 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to HNL record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,736 completed flights
Avg delay
72 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.29%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.4%
Every carrier on SFO to HNL, 2,426 flights
These figures cover 1,742 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SFO to HNL
United flew 1,742 of the 2,426 flights on SFO to HNL, most of the route. Its 86.5% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.5% to Alaska at 66.3%. Two 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) | 1,742 | 86.5% | 72 min | 0.29% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 323 | 69.9% | 60 min | 3.10% | C− |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 361 | 66.3% | 51 min | 2.22% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to HNL
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 16 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am110 flights97.3%
- 8am–11am438 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm283 flights84.0%
- 2pm–5pm538 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm373 flights89.2%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 97.3% of the time, against 81.7% for the afternoon window. That is 16 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 538 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to HNL through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 98.4% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 210 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.5%. 7 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 17,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 49 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 16,837 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 6,364 of the 17,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.29%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 85.7% on time across 1,742 flights, within about 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 1,742 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 May 76.9%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of May before you think about anything else. 1,736 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 HNL69.9%
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to HNL66.3%
- 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 7.04 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.