UA1221

UA1221 arrived on time 92.3% of the time, against 83.4% for all HNL → LAX flights, so this departure is 8.9 percentage points better than the route as a whole. Against United Airlines’ own flights on this route it is 5.8 points better.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · 953 operations, July 2023 – July 2026 · If UA1221 is cancelled or significantly changed, DOT’s automatic refund rule may entitle you to your money back. The refund checker walks through eligibility.

Every day of the week performs about the same on this flight, steadier than 91% of 1,710 comparable flight numbers.

94.7% on time on the best day (Thursday) against 89.6% on the worst (Monday).

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · The one thing about this specific departure that ranks most extreme against every other published flight number, out of everything FlyerIntel checks — shown only when something clears a real statistical bar, not for every flight.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

Share of the delay minutes US DOT attributed to each cause for UA1221 on HNL → LAX. Only delays of 15 minutes or more are attributed.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

UA1221 is usually the aircraft’s first flight of the day: the schedule gives it a median of 10.6 hours on the ground at HNL, so its “inbound” is mostly the aircraft’s arrival the evening before.

The aircraft flying UA1221 came in 15 or more minutes late on 29% of the departures where its previous flight is known. There are not enough departures in both groups to say how the flight left after a late one and after an on-time one.

Each departure is matched to the flight the same aircraft flew into HNL just before it, using the tail number in the DOT file, 132 of 945 departures in all. A departure is left out when that flight is unknown, was cancelled or diverted, or the aircraft had sat for more than 12 hours. A flight the airline cancelled never left and is not in the count, and one flown by a substitute aircraft is matched to the aircraft that flew it, not to the one first planned.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

UA1221 pushes back an average of 12.5 minutes late and reaches the gate at LAX an average of 0.3 minutes late. The 12.2 minutes between those two figures are slack the published schedule already carries, which is why a late pushback on this flight does not reliably become a late arrival. It spends 17.9 minutes on the taxiways at HNL, 1.9 minutes longer than a typical HNL departure in the same hour.

On arrival at LAX, UA1221 spends 10.0 min taxiing from touchdown to the gate — ground time a connecting passenger sits through before they can even leave the aircraft, on top of however late the flight itself ran. That is about what any arrival at LAX spends on the ground before reaching the gate.

Departure delay is averaged over every pushback and arrival delay over every completed arrival, so the two counts differ by the flights that never reached LAX. Taxi-out is gate to wheels up and sits inside the scheduled block rather than on top of it; the comparison is 13,500 departures from HNL scheduled in the clock hour UA1221 most often leaves in. Taxi-in is landing to gate, compared against every arrival FlyerIntel has on file at LAX (595,170 flights), not just UA1221’s own. More on taxi time.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026

UA1221 is scheduled out of HNL at 8:00 AM, in the 8 AM–9 AM bank. Departures from HNL in that hour arrive on time 91.9% of the time against 85.3% across the airport’s whole day — the slot alone is worth 6.6 points better before anything about this particular flight is considered.

The two airport figures cover every departure from HNL to every destination, so they describe the slot rather than this journey — the like-for-like comparison against the route is above. Hours are scheduled local, and a number whose schedule moved between banks inside the period has no single hour and is not described here at all. Why the hour matters.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Hours below 120 departures are not scored.

Source: FlyerIntel analysis of US DOT BTS data · July 2023 – July 2026 · Days with fewer than 120 operations are not scored.

Because the same number has served different journeys, the statistics above describe only the route UA1221 currently operates. Blending them would produce an average of two different flights.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics · Data covering July 2023 – July 2026

Every departure listed carries at least 600 operations, so the comparison is between figures that mean something. UA1221 is placed in the same ordering rather than left out of it; the rows around it are the most punctual departures on the route, not all of them, so this is a comparison and not a rank. Schedules change; confirm the departure still operates before booking around this.

• DL422 HNL→LAX Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 7:00 AM, on time 92.4%
• DL427 HNL→LAX Delta Air Lines on the same route, departs 12:00 PM, on time 81.3%
• UA1169 HNL→LAX United Airlines on the same route, departs 9:40 PM, on time 91.2%
• UA252 HNL→IAH United Airlines flight out of HNL, HNL to IAH, departs 7:55 PM, on time 86.6%