The initials for Hawaiian Airlines — HAL — used to stand for "Hawaiian’s Always Late."

But the most punctual U.S. carrier over the last 10 years has long since distanced itself from that unflattering association.

Hawaiian continued its string of high marks in July when it led all domestic airlines with an on-time performance mark of 94.6 percent, according to the monthly Air Travel Consumer Report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.

That was the highest mark this year by any of the 16 listed airlines and the best since Hawaiian posted a 94.8 percent on-time rec­ord in October 2012. A flight is considered on time if it arrives at the gate within 15 minutes of its scheduled arrival time.

The only time this year that Hawaiian relinquished the No. 1 spot was in January when Virgin America snuck in at 93.1 percent and Hawaiian took second at 92.5 percent.

"We put an enormous amount of effort into making sure we provide smooth and punctual service, and thanks to the hard work of all our operations employees on the ground and in the air, we make it happen," Hawaiian spokes­woman Ann Bot­ti­celli said. "We have a systems operation and control center that watches our flights 24/7 and makes adjustments when needed to keep our flight schedules on time. This can involve inserting spare aircraft and crews into an existing schedule when possible to make sure that our flights are punctual."

The DOT data cover nonstop scheduled-service flights between points within the United States, including territories.

Botticelli said there’s a misconception that Hawaiian has a built-in advantage in achieving high on-time marks because its interisland flights are 50 minutes or less and there are fewer weather-related delays.

"Some people note that we have an advantage in some ways by our geographic location," she said. "However, the short-haul routes are three-fourths of our operation and the hardest to keep punctual because the hops are very short with very brief ground time between flights, so any delay is very difficult to make up. With 12 to 16 segments a day, one delayed flight can easily cascade into several delays in a single day."

Mesa Air Group’s go! also shored up its operations in July.

The Phoenix-based carrier had only two interisland flights that were chronically late, meaning more than 50 percent of the flights were more than 30 minutes late for two consecutive months (June and July). This compares with 32 interisland flights that were chronically late for two or more months through midyear. The affected flights in the June-July period were the 8:30 p.m. Hono­lulu-Kona flight — which averaged being late by as much as 1 hour, 47 minutes — and the 2:45 p.m. Maui-Hono­lulu route, which averaged being late by as much as 1 hour, 25 minutes.

"The improvement is due to the fact that we created more time in the schedule to accommodate our tour operators and to provide additional time during the day for us to catch up if things are delayed," said go! President Chris Pappaioanou, who was elevated to the position from Mesa’s general counsel Sept. 4. "We can also perform additional maintenance work during the day if unscheduled maintenance is needed.

"Secondly, our operational performance has always been a very important goal from a corporate level, so we dedicated a number of additional resources to bring our focus onto the operation here and to work to improve the operation as a whole. We brought out additional mechanics and flight crews to assist during the busy summer period."

Pappaioanou said go!’s flight completion percentage Sept. 1-11 was 96.2 percent, and its on-time performance during that period was 86.2 percent.

Since go! debuted in June 2006, it has completed 98.2 percent of its flights, and 81.5 percent of them arrived on time, Pappaioanou said.

Go! has been operating with a limited fleet since two of its five 50-seat CRJ-200 planes are on the mainland for heavy maintenance. One of the planes is due to return to the fleet in October. There is no tentative return date yet for the second plane.

Hawaii’s other main interisland carrier, Island Air, does not report on-time percentages and is not required to do so.

Overall, Mesa, which also operates United Express and US Air Express, had an on-time performance mark of 71 percent to finish 10th among 16 carriers.

In other categories, Hawaiian ranked first in July for fewest flight cancellations at 0.1 percent, representing four cancellations out of 6,646 total flights; fourth in mishandled baggage reports with 2.45 per 1,000 passengers; and sixth in consumer complaints with 1.17 per 100,000 passengers.

Mesa was 14th for fewest flight cancellations at 2.9 percent, representing 385 cancellations out of 13,209 flights; last in mishandled baggage reports with 5.76 reports per 1,000 passengers; and ninth in consumer complaints with 1.49 per 1,000 passengers. Go!’s data were not separately broken out.