Flight number record

UA 1296

United Airlines · Lihue to Los Angeles

Route: LIH → LAX
Departs: 13:13
Flights: 294
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s UA 1296, check with United Airlines.

UA 1296 earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 35 minutes. That rests on 294 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, UA 1296's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 128 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

90.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 293 completed flights

Avg delay

33 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.34%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

0.7%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 294 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 minutes early, which is the part an average hides: most flights here are fine, and the on-time rate is decided by a tail of badly late ones. On-time means under 15 minutes late, the DOT's own threshold.

Schedule

When UA 1296 flies

UA 1296 flies LIH to LAX without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 13:13, used on 48 of 294 flights, with 14:15 (44 flights) and 13:01 (42 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 13:1348 flights16.3%
Departs 14:1544 flights15.0%
Departs 13:0142 flights14.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 13:13 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and UA 1296 runs 12 points better at 90.4%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

UA 1296 next to LIH to LAX

Every carrier on LIH to LAX combined arrived on time 83.2% of the time across 1,539 flights, so UA 1296 is 7 points ahead of it. Across its whole network United Airlines managed 79.0%, which this flight beats by 11 points.

UA 1296 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
UA 1296thin sample	294	90.4%	33 min	0.34%	A+
All United Airlines on LIH–LAX	379	90.7%	57 min	0.26%	A+
All carriers on LIH–LAX	1,539	83.2%	59 min	0.71%	B+
United Airlines, whole network	821,041	79.0%	72 min	1.01%	B

Across the year

UA 1296 quarter by quarter

UA 1296 did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 77.8%, a swing of 17 points on roughly 74 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Jul–Sep 202585 flights95.2%
Oct–Dec 202589 flights91.0%
Jan–Mar 202636 flights77.8%
Apr–Jun 202684 flights90.5%

Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, UA 1296 ranged from 86.0% on Sunday to 95.5% on Monday. With about 42 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why UA 1296 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. National Airspace System accounts for 49% of the 910 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.

National Airspace System
49%
Carrier
30%
Late-arriving aircraft
21%

49% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 443 minutes out of 910, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 910 delay minutes reported on UA 1296.

Cancellations are rare at 0.34%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 0.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.

At 2,615 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.

The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including BOS to EWR (32), EWR to RDU (20) and CLE to ORD (18), but none flew often enough under UA 1296 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LIH to LAX only.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 294 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.

What to do with this

Booking UA 1296

For a booking, UA 1296 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 90.4% on time and 0.34% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means United Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.

Key figures