Map: Every Nonstop Flight to Hawaii and What It Costs You

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Nonstop routes to Hawaii arranged by compass bearing and distance from Honolulu.<br>Every route from the north and east is slower flying out. The two from the west and<br>south are faster.1,000 mi2,000 mi3,000 mi4,000 mi5,000 miNSEWHawaiiJFKIADATLORDMSPGUMDFWDENSLCANCLASSEAPPGLAXSFO Slower flying out Faster flying out Line weight is flights per day. Crowded dots stay unlabeled until you pick one.

68 routes<br>Pick an airport<br>Hover or tap any dot. Every airport out to the north and east is slower flying out,<br>because reaching Hawaii from them means flying west. The two on the other side of<br>the map are faster, because reaching Hawaii from them means flying east.<br>Slower flying out 66 of 68 pairs<br>Average extra time 38 minutes<br>Worst route Atlanta to Kahului, 99 minutes<br>Flights measured 88,387

The extra time grows faster than the distance<br>That flying west takes longer is not news. What surprised me is that the extra time does<br>not stay proportional to the distance. The longer the route, the bigger that gap<br>becomes as a share of the return flight.<br>One route per airport below, the Honolulu one, so the rows compare like with like. The<br>ranked table further down averages every route an airport flies, which is why a few<br>numbers differ between the two.<br>To Honolulu fromMilesLonger flying outShare of the returnSan Francisco SFO2,39822 min8.0%Los Angeles LAX2,55630 min10.3%Seattle SEA2,67727 min8.7%Denver DEN3,36544 min12.1%Chicago ORD4,24366 min14.8%Atlanta ATL4,50281 min16.8%Newark EWR4,96293 min17.5%<br>San Francisco gives up about 8 percent of its return time. Newark gives up 17.5 percent<br>over roughly twice the distance. Across the 66 westbound pairs<br>the extra time tracks distance at r = 0.94 with a negative intercept.<br>That is a strong trend and it is not a rule. Seattle is the row that makes that clear.<br>It is 121 miles further out than Los Angeles and gives up three minutes less. Whatever<br>is happening is not simply a function of distance.<br>I do not know why<br>The obvious guess is the jet stream, and that the longer routes spend more of the<br>flight in the stronger part of it. That makes sense until you notice Seattle is the<br>northernmost departure in the table and one of the smallest gaps, so the<br>explanation does not survive its own example.<br>The DOT data gives me flight times and distances, not winds aloft. I cannot settle the<br>question from this dataset and I am not going to pretend I can. If you have historical<br>winds-aloft data that would let me test it, I would like to see it.<br>Why the two on the far side are not exceptions<br>The jet stream generally runs west to east across the Pacific. Fly west into it and it<br>costs you time. Fly east with it and it gives some back.<br>For a while this page said 66 of 68 routes, with two exceptions. That is<br>technically true and it makes the two routes sound mysterious. They are Guam and Pago<br>Pago. Both are west and south of Hawaii, so flying from either one to Hawaii means<br>flying east, and both are faster flying out, Guam by 37 minutes and Pago Pago by 16.<br>Once you account for direction it is 68 out of 68 . Every route that<br>flies west to reach Hawaii is slower doing it. Both routes that fly east to reach<br>Hawaii are faster.<br>The map is what made this obvious. Each airport is placed by its initial great-circle<br>bearing from Honolulu rather than on a conventional geographic map, so Guam and Pago<br>Pago land on the opposite side of the circle from everything else and the colour flips<br>there too.

Ranked by extra time flying out<br>FromMilesBearingExtra time flying outFlights a dayNewark EWR4,955283°+93 min0.4Atlanta ATL4,495280°+90 min1.5Washington Dulles IAD4,809281°+89 min0.6New York JFK4,975283°+84 min1.9Detroit DTW4,468277°+75 min0.9Chicago ORD4,237274°+69 min2.2Dallas Fort Worth DFW3,779274°+65 min4.1Houston IAH3,898277°+63 min1Minneapolis MSP3,967268°+61 min1Salt Lake City SLC2,991258°+46 min4Denver DEN3,360264°+44 min5Phoenix PHX2,914265°+43 min8.3Las Vegas LAS2,759260°+38 min10.2Everett PAE2,694240°+37 min0.6Long Beach LGB2,566261°+34 min3San Diego SAN2,610263°+33 min9.7Ontario ONT2,600261°+30 min1.1Burbank BUR2,559260°+29 min0.3Portland PDX2,603242°+27 min6.5Los Angeles LAX2,553260°+27 min30.3San Jose SJC2,415253°+27 min4.2Seattle SEA2,677240°+26 min20Sacramento SMF2,460251°+25 min5.3Oakland OAK2,407252°+23 min5.8San Francisco SFO2,397252°+20 min17.6Anchorage ANC2,781191°+14 min1.5Pago Pago PPG2,61120°-16 min0.3Guam GUM3,79673°-37 min1<br>Bearing is the initial great-circle heading from that airport to Honolulu. Extra time is<br>the mean across every route that airport flies, from median air times over<br>2026-01-01 to 2026-06-30, which is why an airport serving more than one island reads<br>differently here than in the Honolulu-only table above. Miles here are measured from<br>Honolulu rather than taken from the DOT's filed route distance, so they can differ by a<br>few miles for the same reason.<br>Route-by-route figures are on the flights...