Honolulu’s airport just landed near the bottom of a big national passenger survey: 23rd of 24 large U.S. airports in JD Power’s 2026 study. We fly out of HNL twice a year, and nothing in the ranking surprised us. What interested us more was the reason JD Power’s travel lead gave, because it tells you what to fix on your side of the trip.
What happened
On September 16, 2026, JD Power released its 2026 North America Airport Satisfaction Study. It is based on 24,710 surveys fielded from July 2025 through July 2026, and it sorts airports by size. “Large” means 10 to 32.9 million passengers a year. Tampa led the large airports with 715, followed by Portland (708) and Dallas Love Field (698). The release text names only those top three, but its Large Airports chart lists all 24: Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International scored 604, 23rd, ahead of only Philadelphia (596).
A year earlier, the large-airport chart in JD Power’s 2025 release had Honolulu at 617, 22nd of 27. So the comparison group itself changed, a point Hawaii Department of Transportation Director Ed Sniffen made to the Star-Advertiser in its October 5 story, adding that major storms also influenced the results.
JD Power’s Michael Taylor, managing director of travel, hospitality and retail, gave the paper a blunter version: “The larger story here is the airport is old. The building is holding you back.”
| Large airports, JD Power 2026 | Score (1,000-point scale) |
|---|---|
| Tampa International (1st) | 715 |
| Portland International (2nd) | 708 |
| Dallas Love Field (3rd) | 698 |
| Honolulu, Daniel K. Inouye (23rd) | 604 (617 in 2025) |
| Philadelphia International (24th) | 596 |
The timing stings a little. JD Power says satisfaction across the large-airport group rose 13 points this year. Going by JD Power’s charts, Honolulu fell 13 (617 minus 604).
What it changes for a Waikiki stay
Nothing about which airport you use. If you are flying home to the mainland from Oahu, you are flying from HNL, so a survey score is not a choice you get to make. What the story does give you is a list of the specific things that drag the experience down, from people who would know:
- Food in the afternoon. “The times I’ve been there in the midafternoon, there’s nothing open in big sections of the airport and that frustrates people,” Taylor told the paper. New dining is arriving: the Star-Advertiser says Waialua Bar & Cafe is already open, with concepts from Alan Wong, MW Restaurant, Aloha Plate and The Lei-Over slated to open later. Much of that was not in place during the survey period, and none of it has an opening date in the story.
- The busy window. Sniffen said the airport is trying to spread flights away from the peak 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. window.
- Heat and walking. State Rep. Adrian Tam, who chairs the House Tourism Committee, named heat and long walks between gates among the most common complaints. “My main issue is how hot it is,” he said. The paper adds that passenger-assistance carts moved more than 37,000 passengers and employees in August.
- Finding your gate. Taylor also flagged wayfinding. The airport is removing what Sniffen called “sign congestion” and plans to simplify its gates from eight lettered zones to five. The story gives no date for that change.
Most of the money being spent will not show up on your next trip. Sniffen described the $2.1 billion Diamond Head Concourse (six gates growing to 17), about $400 million in airfield work and a $100 million Terminal 2 roadway program as largely invisible to travelers. The one he called the kind people notice right away is small: a $650,000 seating and lounge-area refresh at Terminal 1 gates A14 through A19.
What we would do
We would change the morning, not the flight.
Eat in Waikiki, not at the gate. Our days are built around a takeout plate and an early start on the beer, and an afternoon departure does not get special treatment. If the flight leaves after lunch, we would pick up food in Waikiki and eat before the ride, and count anything open past security as a bonus rather than the plan. Taylor’s “nothing open” line describes exactly the hours when we would otherwise be hungry.
Leave early anyway. We would rather be early and bored at the gate than late and walking fast, and the heat-and-distance complaints make that easier to say. Most of the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. crunch is outside our control, but the margin is not.
Carry the jacket. Anyone flying home overnight to a cold city tends to dress for the arrival. At HNL we would carry the layers and put them on at boarding or on the plane. Rep. Tam’s picture of rushing to a flight in pants and a jacket is the exact situation to avoid.
Read the gate off the screen, not memory. With lettered zones being consolidated and Hawaiian having just moved its international check-in to Terminal 2, Lobby 4, this is a season to trust the boarding pass and the app over last year’s habits.
What we would not do is let the ranking color the whole trip. We almost never shop at the airport, so the retail overhaul (the paper says International Shoppes, which took over in April, now gets about 80% of non-duty-free sales from local partners) will not change our day. And the airport is not graded badly on everything: Taylor told the paper that passengers “like the island feel” and gave it relatively strong marks for a calm atmosphere. That matches the version of HNL we like best, the one where you are early, already fed, and nobody is hurrying.
Before you plan around this
Two caveats. First, the scores and ranks here are read off the Large Airports charts in JD Power’s 2026 and 2025 releases; the quotes and the airport’s plans come from the Star-Advertiser. Second, most of the survey period (July 2025 to July 2026) came before the retail changeover, so it describes an airport that is already a little different from the one you will walk through.
Restaurant openings, gate letters and concession hours can all change week to week. This was checked against JD Power’s September 16, 2026 release, its 2025 release and the Star-Advertiser’s October 5 report, as of October 6, 2026. For your own flight, the airline app and the airport’s screens beat any article, this one included.
