Route reliability record
SMF→HNL
Sacramento to Honolulu
- Flights
- 730
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,462 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 730 SMF to HNL flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.
Best time to fly SMF to HNL: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Thursday flights 86.5%, against 80.8% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 729 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
86.6% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 730 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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
Which airline is most reliable on SMF to HNL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 86.6% | 45 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 181 | 76.8% | 41 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 73.2% | 71 min | 0.54% | C+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 730 flights.
- 5am–8am67 flights80.6%
- 8am–11am417 flights77.6%
- 11am–2pm245 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm1 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 86.1% on time, ahead of 8am–11am at 77.6%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 417 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in April, when the on-time rate falls to 66.7%. June is the strongest month at 93.3%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 27 points. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.0%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 83% of the 7,418 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.
- 83%Carrier
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 83%, 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 6,190 of the 7,418 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 7,418 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.14%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.4% 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 2,462 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 77.5% on time across 730 flights, 3 points below 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 730 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in HNL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 730 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 80.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 729 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SMF to HNL questions
How often is SMF to HNL delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.2% of the 730 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is SMF to HNL compared with the rest of the country?
80.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SMF to HNL?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 77.6%, 9 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are April delays on SMF to HNL?
April is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 93.3% in June. Across the year that is 27 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to SMF — the return legseparate record
- Sacramento International (SMF) delay statistics
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on SMF to HNL86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on SMF to HNL76.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on SMF to HNL73.2%
- SMF to LAX, a related route86.0%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.7%
- SMF to SAN, a related route73.3%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record86.6%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record76.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record73.2%
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SMF to HNL and HNL to SMF are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.