Hawaiian Airlines Marks 16 Consecutive Years as Most Punctual U.S. Airline ... Hawaiian's flights averaged an 87.7 percent on-time rate in 2019, exceeding the U.S. industry average by 6.1 percentage points.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 07417.html

Any idea how Hawaiian is doing so good, despite having "older" B717 and in the past B767-300ER in its fleet? What is the secret behind the story? How is Hawaiian archiving this record, like longer turn-around, less operating hours per aircraft per day or just less congested airspace at its hubs?

Weather

debonair wrote:

Hawaiian Airlines Marks 16 Consecutive Years as Most Punctual U.S. Airline ... Hawaiian's flights averaged an 87.7 percent on-time rate in 2019, exceeding the U.S. industry average by 6.1 percentage points.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-release ... 07417.html

Any idea how Hawaiian is doing so good, despite having "older" B717 and in the past B767-300ER in its fleet? What is the secret behind the story? How is Hawaiian archiving this record, like longer turn-around, less operating hours per aircraft per day or just less congested airspace at its hubs?

As GoSteelers said above, weather def plays a role what with being based in Hawaii. As for the older 717's, I think they maintain spares, because I frequently have seen pics/vids where you see several parked by their MX hangar west of the Inter-Island terminal, so they clearly have slack in that fleet. As for the now-departed 763's, I didn't see many delays with them anytime I'd look at FLIFO for various random flights, so they must have kept them up quite well; now with them gone and all A332's in their place, well, that speaks for itself. And I think you also hit it when you asked about less congested airspace, again being based in Hawaii this must play a role.

Uh, maybe because 99% of their flights (exaggerating to make a point) start and finish in Hawaii? This isn't rocket science.

9w748capt wrote:

Uh, maybe because 99% of their flights (exaggerating to make a point) start and finish in Hawaii? This isn't rocket science.

And the ones that don't tend to be long stage lengths with fairly long ground times, which helps prevent cascading delays.

Hawaiian is far smaller in fleet size, pax carried, and movements than most household name US carriers. This much lower complexity allows it to post these pleasantly high numbers. For context AA flew 215M pax last year vs HA's 11.7M.

YOWza

Another way to put a rapid end to this thread is to point out they basically have no flights to the most delay prone airports in the USA such as NYC-3 aiports or Philly.

Or hubs that get are get summer thunderstorms or winter storms.

I think you can summarize it as "fewer variables outside of their control."

Very little weather. Virtually no ATC congestion. 95%+ short haul flying where jetstream doesn't matter at all. And they've definitely optimized their operational performance for their money-making short-haul ops.

Put them out of their element and their ops are average at best, and terrible at their worst. Admittedly these are small number of operations (so subject to significant year-to-year swings and also just bad block time management) but their on-time rates on their long haul flights are just absolutely terrible. Only 58% A14 at Seattle (vs. 80% average), 74% at LAX (vs 80% average), 70% at SFO (vs. 73% average), 63% (vs. 78% average) at JFK.

Also, pretty much all 717s return to the HNL base for RON.

As others have said before me, it pretty much boils down to a small fleet compared to the larger airlines, an O&D heavy operation that always starts and finishes in HNL and predictable weather year-round. Compare that to a UA 737 that might do BOS-EWR-TPA-IAH-LAX-DEN in a day (similar cases can be made for AA/DL/WN while AS and especially B6 get hit by the weather factor). Obviously, being top 16 years in a row is still a major accomplishment and shows that HA is definitely doing something right, but they're starting off with a very good hand of cards to play with.

IADCA wrote:

9w748capt wrote:

Uh, maybe because 99% of their flights (exaggerating to make a point) start and finish in Hawaii? This isn't rocket science.

And the ones that don't tend to be long stage lengths with fairly long ground times, which helps prevent cascading delays.

This is a good point. Almost all HA's mainland ops are RONs. The exceptions being some flights to LAX and LAS, as well as JFK and BOS.

ncflyer wrote:

Another way to put a rapid end to this thread is to point out they basically have no flights to the most delay prone airports in the USA such as NYC-3 aiports or Philly.

HA does fly to JFK you know.

FSDan wrote:

IADCA wrote:

9w748capt wrote:

Uh, maybe because 99% of their flights (exaggerating to make a point) start and finish in Hawaii? This isn't rocket science.

And the ones that don't tend to be long stage lengths with fairly long ground times, which helps prevent cascading delays.

This is a good point. Almost all HA's mainland ops are RONs. The exceptions being some flights to LAX and LAS, as well as JFK and BOS.

Yep. I forgot about that; it certainly helps.

And to the poster who responded above quoting their terrible on-time performance on long-hauls, I would like to point out that their on-time performance here at PHX is stellar.

cathay747 wrote:

ncflyer wrote:

Another way to put a rapid end to this thread is to point out they basically have no flights to the most delay prone airports in the USA such as NYC-3 aiports or Philly.

HA does fly to JFK you know.

Once a day, same as BOS! Their flights times at both JFK and BOS are not during the busiest times of the day, which tends to be in the afternoon and evening (especially JFK). Their planes are most of the way back to HI by then. My point is that even with their token one flight per day to the busy airports in the Northeast, it hardly makes even a tiny difference to their on-time calculation.

cathay747 wrote:

ncflyer wrote:

Another way to put a rapid end to this thread is to point out they basically have no flights to the most delay prone airports in the USA such as NYC-3 aiports or Philly.

HA does fly to JFK you know.

And they are far enough away that when they leave HNL there are no delay programs or EDCT's in place. I can't believe anybody would wonder why an airline with very limited exposure to any place with weather or congestion would have such a good on time arrival rate. The real story would be if they ever were below 90%... no ow that would require an investigation.

cathay747 wrote:

ncflyer wrote:

Another way to put a rapid end to this thread is to point out they basically have no flights to the most delay prone airports in the USA such as NYC-3 aiports or Philly.

HA does fly to JFK you know.

Hence the word “basically”. Their JFK flights could be delayed 100% of the time and it wouldn’t tip the scales.

On the shorter flights, the same crew can remain on for as many as 4 flights. That has to help as well.

aemoreira1981 wrote:

On the shorter flights, the same crew can remain on for as many as 4 flights. That has to help as well.

Four? Try nearly doubling that number.

.. Is this a trick question?

cathay747 wrote:

FSDan wrote:

IADCA wrote:

And the ones that don't tend to be long stage lengths with fairly long ground times, which helps prevent cascading delays.

This is a good point. Almost all HA's mainland ops are RONs. The exceptions being some flights to LAX and LAS, as well as JFK and BOS.

Yep. I forgot about that; it certainly helps.

And to the poster who responded above quoting their terrible on-time performance on long-hauls, I would like to point out that their on-time performance here at PHX is stellar.

Their A14 into PHX is below the airport average. Their D14 is above average, but that's because the plane RONs. In fact, the fact that they are only at 91% D14 when they are departing from RON is actually pretty bad. There's practically zero variables that should be driving a delayed push for them. The plane is there, the crew is there, and the planes they fly have 99% dispatch reliability. There would be very few events that would make Hawaiian not depart at the gate.. even with WX they would want to get in line for departure as soon as possible (and PHX isn't exactly known for variable weather).

If the legacies had only a 90% D14 rate on RONs then they would be absolutely screwed.

Anyways, this isn't to say that Hawaiian runs bad ops. But their ops are focused on keeping their intra-island flights moving. Outside of that, their ops are pretty immature. And really, that's okay because they don't really need to run on time. I don't say that to be funny, I'm serious. If I am flying outbound from HNL, I am not connecting - it's mostly O&D. if my inbound to HNL is delayed.. who cares other than maybe losing my seat assignment? There is another flight in 30-45 minutes going to my island. Not really a big deal.

ethernal wrote:

If the legacies had only a 90% D14 rate on RONs then they would be absolutely screwed.

Legacies probably are pretty close to a 88-90% D14 rate on RONs when you consider the fact that a lot of turn MX delays become RONs when swapped to spares. 92-93% on a system level would be normal.

ethernal wrote:

In fact, the fact that they are only at 91% D14 when they are departing from RON is actually pretty bad. There's practically zero variables that should be driving a delayed push for them. The plane is there, the crew is there, and the planes they fly have 99% dispatch reliability. There would be very few events that would make Hawaiian not depart at the gate.. even with WX they would want to get in line for departure as soon as possible (and PHX isn't exactly known for variable weather).

If the legacies had only a 90% D14 rate on RONs then they would be absolutely screwed.

All true, but if/when you only have 1 departure a day, any delays will have a much more outsized impact on your stats than if you had dozens.

I can't believe anybody would wonder why an airline with very limited exposure to any place with weather or congestion would have such a good on time arrival rate.

Maybe you should go back in time to when you didn't know everything about the industry. Curiosity is a good thing. Be kind.

Hawaiian has a couple of things going for it, some of them mentioned in this post. However, there is one item not mentioned here and that is the Ohana operation. See, Hawaiian was smart because the Ohana operation, which is one which flies to the small secondary airports of Lanai and Molokai, are really "off the books" from the on-time factor of Hawaiian. They are listed under Empire Air, which was very intentional by Hawaiian. Reason? Flights to LNY and MKK are notoriously delayed, either due to weather, winds, combination of both or something completely not within their control. So while "Ohana by Hawaiian" may have a less-than-stellar track record, it won't affect Hawaiian at all in figures like this.

KanaHawaii wrote:

Hawaiian has a couple of things going for it, some of them mentioned in this post. However, there is one item not mentioned here and that is the Ohana operation. See, Hawaiian was smart because the Ohana operation, which is one which flies to the small secondary airports of Lanai and Molokai, are really "off the books" from the on-time factor of Hawaiian. They are listed under Empire Air, which was very intentional by Hawaiian. Reason? Flights to LNY and MKK are notoriously delayed, either due to weather, winds, combination of both or something completely not within their control. So while "Ohana by Hawaiian" may have a less-than-stellar track record, it won't affect Hawaiian at all in figures like this.

In fairness I don't see that as any different than the regional ops on the mainland - all of which suffer from below mainline completion and on-time rates.

ethernal wrote:

KanaHawaii wrote:

Hawaiian has a couple of things going for it, some of them mentioned in this post. However, there is one item not mentioned here and that is the Ohana operation. See, Hawaiian was smart because the Ohana operation, which is one which flies to the small secondary airports of Lanai and Molokai, are really "off the books" from the on-time factor of Hawaiian. They are listed under Empire Air, which was very intentional by Hawaiian. Reason? Flights to LNY and MKK are notoriously delayed, either due to weather, winds, combination of both or something completely not within their control. So while "Ohana by Hawaiian" may have a less-than-stellar track record, it won't affect Hawaiian at all in figures like this.

In fairness I don't see that as any different than the regional ops on the mainland - all of which suffer from below mainline completion and on-time rates.

Might want to walk that claim back. Just for Dec 2019 alone looking at A14:

1) HA
2) DL
3) 9E
4) NK
5) AA
6) UA
7) OO
8) MQ
9) WN
10) YX
11) F9
12) OH
13) YV
14) AS
15) G4
16) EV
17) B6

Source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... 20ATCR.pdf

ethernal wrote:

Their A14 into PHX is below the airport average. Their D14 is above average, but that's because the plane RONs. In fact, the fact that they are only at 91% D14 when they are departing from RON is actually pretty bad. There's practically zero variables that should be driving a delayed push for them. The plane is there, the crew is there, and the planes they fly have 99% dispatch reliability. There would be very few events that would make Hawaiian not depart at the gate.

Except that now with the A330, the same flight crew turns the airplane with close to minimum rest time. If the inbound is more than 45 minutes late, the outbound will be delayed. The 767 crew had a 32 hour layover.

alasizon wrote:

ethernal wrote:

KanaHawaii wrote:

Hawaiian has a couple of things going for it, some of them mentioned in this post. However, there is one item not mentioned here and that is the Ohana operation. See, Hawaiian was smart because the Ohana operation, which is one which flies to the small secondary airports of Lanai and Molokai, are really "off the books" from the on-time factor of Hawaiian. They are listed under Empire Air, which was very intentional by Hawaiian. Reason? Flights to LNY and MKK are notoriously delayed, either due to weather, winds, combination of both or something completely not within their control. So while "Ohana by Hawaiian" may have a less-than-stellar track record, it won't affect Hawaiian at all in figures like this.

In fairness I don't see that as any different than the regional ops on the mainland - all of which suffer from below mainline completion and on-time rates.

Might want to walk that claim back. Just for Dec 2019 alone looking at A14:

1) HA
2) DL
3) 9E
4) NK
5) AA
6) UA
7) OO
8) MQ
9) WN
10) YX
11) F9
12) OH
13) YV
14) AS
15) G4
16) EV
17) B6

Source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... 20ATCR.pdf

Firstly, looking at one month's stats is not prudent as extreme WX can heavily skew one month's figures. Secondly.. what am I walking back? AA and UA are both above all of the regional partners except 9E - which Delta is above (and it's Delta's subsidiary). So.. yes, regional jets are below their mainline partners. QX isn't on there, but even with AS's terrible December performance due to WX, I bet QX would be below them too.

If you can find one airport where the hub airline's primary regional partner consistently has a higher on-time arrival rate I would be shocked. It's nothing against the regionals, it's just that when push comes to shove, operations is going to decide to delay the 50 seater and not the 190 seater when it comes to prioritizing ATC slots. And that is ignoring physical difference in terms of crosswind tolerance, etc that can make a regional jet unflyable before a mainline.

MO11 wrote:

ethernal wrote:

Their A14 into PHX is below the airport average. Their D14 is above average, but that's because the plane RONs. In fact, the fact that they are only at 91% D14 when they are departing from RON is actually pretty bad. There's practically zero variables that should be driving a delayed push for them. The plane is there, the crew is there, and the planes they fly have 99% dispatch reliability. There would be very few events that would make Hawaiian not depart at the gate.

Except that now with the A330, the same flight crew turns the airplane with close to minimum rest time. If the inbound is more than 45 minutes late, the outbound will be delayed. The 767 crew had a 32 hour layover.

That's totally fair and makes a lot of sense.

ethernal wrote:

alasizon wrote:

ethernal wrote:

In fairness I don't see that as any different than the regional ops on the mainland - all of which suffer from below mainline completion and on-time rates.

Might want to walk that claim back. Just for Dec 2019 alone looking at A14:

1) HA
2) DL
3) 9E
4) NK
5) AA
6) UA
7) OO
8) MQ
9) WN
10) YX
11) F9
12) OH
13) YV
14) AS
15) G4
16) EV
17) B6

Source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... 20ATCR.pdf

Firstly, looking at one month's stats is not prudent as extreme WX can heavily skew one month's figures. Secondly.. what am I walking back? AA and UA are both above all of the regional partners except 9E - which Delta is above (and it's Delta's subsidiary). So.. yes, regional jets are below their mainline partners. QX isn't on there, but even with AS's terrible December performance due to WX, I bet QX would be below them too.

If you can find one airport where the hub airline's primary regional partner consistently has a higher on-time arrival rate I would be shocked. It's nothing against the regionals, it's just that when push comes to shove, operations is going to decide to delay the 50 seater and not the 190 seater when it comes to prioritizing ATC slots. And that is ignoring physical difference in terms of crosswind tolerance, etc that can make a regional jet unflyable before a mainline.

Your statement was that all regionals suffer from worse completion and on-time rates than Mainline which simply isn't true (even if you discount the Mainline ULCCs, B6 underperformed all the regionals and the DL and AS regional systems outperformed WN).

If you went to the source, you would see that for FY2019, QX and OO outperformed AS mainline throughout their system (80.3 vs 82.8 A14), AA's regionals outperformed Mainline 77.0 vs 77.8 for FY2019.

If you'd like me to find your specific airports...
LAX - AS regionals outperformed AS mainline
LAX - AA regionals outperformed AA mainline
SLC - DL regionals outperformed DL mainline
SEA - DL regionals outperformed DL mainline

alasizon wrote:

ethernal wrote:

alasizon wrote:

Might want to walk that claim back. Just for Dec 2019 alone looking at A14:

1) HA
2) DL
3) 9E
4) NK
5) AA
6) UA
7) OO
8) MQ
9) WN
10) YX
11) F9
12) OH
13) YV
14) AS
15) G4
16) EV
17) B6

Source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... 20ATCR.pdf

Firstly, looking at one month's stats is not prudent as extreme WX can heavily skew one month's figures. Secondly.. what am I walking back? AA and UA are both above all of the regional partners except 9E - which Delta is above (and it's Delta's subsidiary). So.. yes, regional jets are below their mainline partners. QX isn't on there, but even with AS's terrible December performance due to WX, I bet QX would be below them too.

If you can find one airport where the hub airline's primary regional partner consistently has a higher on-time arrival rate I would be shocked. It's nothing against the regionals, it's just that when push comes to shove, operations is going to decide to delay the 50 seater and not the 190 seater when it comes to prioritizing ATC slots. And that is ignoring physical difference in terms of crosswind tolerance, etc that can make a regional jet unflyable before a mainline.

Your statement was that all regionals suffer from worse completion and on-time rates than Mainline which simply isn't true (even if you discount the Mainline ULCCs, B6 underperformed all the regionals and the DL and AS regional systems outperformed WN).

If you went to the source, you would see that for FY2019, QX and OO outperformed AS mainline throughout their system (80.3 vs 82.8 A14), AA's regionals outperformed Mainline 77.0 vs 77.8 for FY2019.

If you'd like me to find your specific airports...
LAX - AS regionals outperformed AS mainline
LAX - AA regionals outperformed AA mainline
SLC - DL regionals outperformed DL mainline

Wow, I'll eat my crow and say that I knew things were bad at AA but I didn't know that they were so bad that they're getting beat out by their regional carriers I'll walk that one back.

I'll pass on QX/OO - the flying pattern of AS vs. its regional partners is pretty unique given the regional location of its hubs (PDX/SEA). All of the regional flying is on the West Coast whereas mainline flying includes dealing with the East Coast airports. Virgin America has further concentrated the number of East Coast routes that lowers their numbers.

Your counterpoints are pretty compelling though so I'll eat a bit of crow. I still stand by the fact that regional partners - when flying the same routes - will always have worse completion factors and on-time arrival than their mainline counterparts. It's a physics and flight ops issue. Airports that have really good weather are less likely to see this phenomenon because there are fewer needs to prioritize ATC slots. This is why the airports you see airports like LAX and SLC doing relatively well but far worse at airports like EWR, LGA, ORD.

What is A14, D14, et.al.?

seat1a wrote:

What is A14, D14, et.al.?

It's a specific measure of what "on time" means. The DOT (right or wrong) considers an "on-time departure or arrival" to be anything within 15 minutes of the originally scheduled departure/arrival time. So, D14 means "It arrived within 14 minutes 59 seconds of scheduled arrival time" and meets the DOT definition of "on time".

Other forms often quoted are A0 and D0 (arrived/departed exactly on time or earlier).

On-time rates are almost always quoted as being the A14 number. Usually A0 ("really, really on time") is a good 20 percentage points lower than A14.

So now that AA does not have MD-80s, their on time performance should improve, right?

ethernal wrote:

seat1a wrote:

What is A14, D14, et.al.?

It's a specific measure of what "on time" means. The DOT (right or wrong) considers an "on-time departure or arrival" to be anything within 15 minutes of the originally scheduled departure/arrival time. So, D14 means "It arrived within 14 minutes 59 seconds of scheduled arrival time" and meets the DOT definition of "on time".

Other forms often quoted are A0 and D0 (arrived/departed exactly on time or earlier).

On-time rates are almost always quoted as being the A14 number. Usually A0 ("really, really on time") is a good 20 percentage points lower than A14.

Thanks for the learnings!

Ziyulu wrote:

So now that AA does not have MD-80s, their on time performance should improve, right?

I'm assuming that this is a joke on Hawaiian airline's 717s?

Incidentally, I don't know if this is factually accurate, but from what I've read/understand that the 717 is core to HA's fleet strategy. There is nothing they can buy today that better matches their operational needs. Today's modern, hyper-fuel efficient engines also have a weakness: their engines get torn apart on ultra-fast turns in high temperature environments. And obviously on a 40 minute block time leg, fuel efficiency is pretty inconsequential. Plus nothing can handle cycles like the old DC9 frames.

HA will likely run the 717s into the ground, and it's also one of the reason they keep so many extra relative to their fleet needs.

In short ...Paradise!

alasizon wrote:

ethernal wrote:

alasizon wrote:

Might want to walk that claim back. Just for Dec 2019 alone looking at A14:

1) HA
2) DL
3) 9E
4) NK
5) AA
6) UA
7) OO
8) MQ
9) WN
10) YX
11) F9
12) OH
13) YV
14) AS
15) G4
16) EV
17) B6

Source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/do ... 20ATCR.pdf

Firstly, looking at one month's stats is not prudent as extreme WX can heavily skew one month's figures. Secondly.. what am I walking back? AA and UA are both above all of the regional partners except 9E - which Delta is above (and it's Delta's subsidiary). So.. yes, regional jets are below their mainline partners. QX isn't on there, but even with AS's terrible December performance due to WX, I bet QX would be below them too.

If you can find one airport where the hub airline's primary regional partner consistently has a higher on-time arrival rate I would be shocked. It's nothing against the regionals, it's just that when push comes to shove, operations is going to decide to delay the 50 seater and not the 190 seater when it comes to prioritizing ATC slots. And that is ignoring physical difference in terms of crosswind tolerance, etc that can make a regional jet unflyable before a mainline.

Your statement was that all regionals suffer from worse completion and on-time rates than Mainline which simply isn't true (even if you discount the Mainline ULCCs, B6 underperformed all the regionals and the DL and AS regional systems outperformed WN).

If you went to the source, you would see that for FY2019, QX and OO outperformed AS mainline throughout their system (80.3 vs 82.8 A14), AA's regionals outperformed Mainline 77.0 vs 77.8 for FY2019.

If you'd like me to find your specific airports...
LAX - AS regionals outperformed AS mainline
LAX - AA regionals outperformed AA mainline
SLC - DL regionals outperformed DL mainline
SEA - DL regionals outperformed DL mainline

Their are a couple of examples but generally mainline performs better most of the time and are we really surprised skywest performs excellently out of SLC?

A small airline with a small route network! Of course they should be punctual

ethernal wrote:

MO11 wrote:

ethernal wrote:

Their A14 into PHX is below the airport average. Their D14 is above average, but that's because the plane RONs. In fact, the fact that they are only at 91% D14 when they are departing from RON is actually pretty bad. There's practically zero variables that should be driving a delayed push for them. The plane is there, the crew is there, and the planes they fly have 99% dispatch reliability. There would be very few events that would make Hawaiian not depart at the gate.

Except that now with the A330, the same flight crew turns the airplane with close to minimum rest time. If the inbound is more than 45 minutes late, the outbound will be delayed. The 767 crew had a 32 hour layover.

That's totally fair and makes a lot of sense.

And I might add here that the rare departure delays I see in randomly looking at FLIFO for HA035 is due to crew rest, where I then look at HA036 from the previous day and sure enough, that flight had a pretty rare delay, which I've usually seen as being due to MX, which seems pretty rare now with the 332's.

ethernal wrote:

Ziyulu wrote:

So now that AA does not have MD-80s, their on time performance should improve, right?

I'm assuming that this is a joke on Hawaiian airline's 717s?

Incidentally, I don't know if this is factually accurate, but from what I've read/understand that the 717 is core to HA's fleet strategy. There is nothing they can buy today that better matches their operational needs. Today's modern, hyper-fuel efficient engines also have a weakness: their engines get torn apart on ultra-fast turns in high temperature environments. And obviously on a 40 minute block time leg, fuel efficiency is pretty inconsequential. Plus nothing can handle cycles like the old DC9 frames.

HA will likely run the 717s into the ground, and it's also one of the reason they keep so many extra relative to their fleet needs.

It's been pointed out in several threads where HA's 717's are mentioned or are the topic that currently, there is no other aircraft available or planned that can take the type of operating tempo HA runs with those 717's, and it's totally to do with the engines as you mention. One reason why we'll never see WN expanding their intra-island schedules to the level that HA has...those 737NG or MAX engines couldn't do it. And yes, HA will run those 717's till the wings are about to fall off...partly out of necessity since, as I've already said, there is no viable replacement yet in the market. Possibly the A220, but I've not read any analysis on whether those GTF engines could handle the op tempo/short turns.

I think HA should not even be included in the DOT stats. They have a ridiculous advantage route wise. (i.e.weather)

A small piece, but they also more or less equally distribute flights between SFO/OAK/SJC, as opposed to concentrating at the delay-prone SFO like most airlines

The argument that HA does not fly into congested airports/airspace is not valid.
Airlines should plan their schedules with the expected traffic just as we plan our daily commutes.

Bad weather is a different story and given the weather in Hawaii and that the vast majority of HAʻs flights are inter island, I would have expected their on time performance to be at least in the 90s. Although my family and I have had multiple inter island flights delayed this year because of freak rain storms.

But thatʻs not to say HAʻs performance should not be applauded because:
1. All of their long haul flights operate under ETOPS rules so things canʻt just be MELʻd.
2. They are a small airline so the on time statistics will be affected more by any delay because the denominator (total flights) is much smaller.
3. They are a small airline so having spare aircraft and crew sitting around is more costly.
4. They pad their schedules (even inter island) thus lowering their aircraft utilization to maintain their on time performance.
5. Most of their flights are frequent and short so the snowball effect from one delay can spiral out of control as Iʻve experienced w/ the rare weather delays.
6. A large chunk of their flights are operated by A321neos w/ GTFs which arenʻt the most reliable right now.

DFW has good weather. Why is AA's on time performance horrible?

Ziyulu wrote:

DFW has good weather. Why is AA's on time performance horrible?

You've gotta be kidding. Your post is fundamentally illogical: "necessary" and "sufficient" are different things. What is the comparison between an airline with a single hub in Hawaii and an airline with ten hubs, including places like JFK, PHL, LAX, and ORD, all of which are prone to major delays from congestion, weather, or both, which then cascade throughout the system? That is, good weather at one hub is necessary for sustained timely operations over that hub, but it's completely insufficient for systemwide timeliness, especially in a multi-hub carrier.

That's like pointing out that UA's Houston hub has fine operating conditions while ignoring the system-wide train wrecks EWR and SFO cause on a daily basis. Same for DL and B6 and the mess created by JFK.

Edit: Oh, never mind. I've read some of your other posts. Probably just wasting my time.

F27500 wrote:

.. Is this a trick question?

How dare you violate the echo chamber!

In around 1960 when United first got DC-8s and Caravelles, they would have been about the size of Hawaiian today. What a time to be alive (if you could afford a ticket)!

Much of Hawaiian’s flying is long haul, which tends to have a bit more of a cushion for delays than short hall flying, which results in more on time arrivals. The ratio of short to long haul aircraft for HA is 1:2, while for American Airlines it is about 4:1 (excluding regional airlines for both HA and AA). Another thing about the long haul flying is that there are less inbounds and stops in cities with poor weather to get delayed by, with some aircraft flying as little as one to two flights a day.