Guide
Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
68,240 flights on 12 inter-island routes ran 83.7% on time from September 2025 to August 2026, against 77.3% nationally. The best route ranks 187 of 2,978 US routes.
Flying between the Hawaiian islands is unlike almost any other flying in the United States.
The flights are short, the aircraft often fly many legs a day, the airports are small by mainland standards, and a large share of passengers are visitors making one hop between two islands on a tight holiday schedule.
This guide looks at every inter-island route with a page on this site, 12 routes carrying 68,240 flights from September 2025 to August 2026, and asks how they compare with the rest of the country.
The inter-island routes
| Route | Flights | On time | Cancelled | An hour+ late | US rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KOA → OGG | 1,460 | 86.9% | 0.41% | 2.5% | 187 of 2,978 |
| HNL → KOA | 7,226 | 85.3% | 1.41% | 2.4% | 327 of 2,978 |
| HNL → OGG | 9,998 | 84.1% | 1.11% | 2.5% | 453 of 2,978 |
| LIH → HNL | 7,701 | 84.1% | 1.69% | 3.4% | 458 of 2,978 |
| OGG → HNL | 10,001 | 84.1% | 1.25% | 2.7% | 460 of 2,978 |
| KOA → HNL | 7,227 | 83.8% | 1.52% | 3.3% | 502 of 2,978 |
| HNL → LIH | 7,699 | 83.7% | 1.49% | 2.9% | 513 of 2,978 |
| HNL → ITO | 6,276 | 83.6% | 1.42% | 2.5% | 524 of 2,978 |
| ITO → HNL | 6,272 | 82.6% | 1.45% | 3.3% | 675 of 2,978 |
| LIH → OGG | 1,460 | 81.8% | 0.48% | 2.5% | 813 of 2,978 |
| OGG → KOA | 1,460 | 79.7% | 0.34% | 3.9% | 1,219 of 2,978 |
| OGG → LIH | 1,460 | 74.9% | 0.14% | 4.5% | 2,107 of 2,978 |
Each route links to its full page, with every carrier on it, the departure-time breakdown, the month-by-month record and the delay causes. The last column shows where the route ranks for on-time rate among all 2,978 US routes with a page.
Taken together, the inter-island routes arrived on time 83.7% of the time, weighted by flights. The national rate over the same period was 77.3%. The best-performing route, KOA to OGG, ran 86.9% on time and ranks 187 nationally. The weakest, OGG to LIH, ran 74.9%.
The badly late share is what stands out to me. On the Honolulu to Kahului route, the busiest island hop, only 2.5% of flights arrived an hour or more late, against 8.3% nationally. Island delays are frequent enough to notice and rarely long.
What makes island flying different
Short flights have very little time in the air to recover a late departure. A mainland flight of two or three hours can often make up ten minutes en route. A 30- or 40-minute island hop cannot, so a late departure almost always becomes a late arrival.
Against that, the islands avoid many of the causes that dominate mainland delays. There is little congestion of the kind that holds aircraft at the big mainland hubs, and winter storms are not a factor. Delays on these routes tend to come instead from the aircraft's own schedule: when one aircraft flies many short legs a day, a problem on the first leg can follow it for the rest of the day.
Weather still matters. Trade-wind showers and occasional storms can affect the smaller airports, and the month-by-month strips on the route pages show which months carry the risk. On Honolulu to Kahului the weakest month was March at 77.6%, the best September at 94.6%.
Cancellations and badly late flights
For an island hop, the on-time rate is only part of the story. A cancelled inter-island flight can mean a lost day of a short trip, and the next flight may already be full.
Weighted by flights, the inter-island routes cancelled 1.31% of scheduled flights, against a national rate of 1.89%. The share of arrivals an hour or more late was 2.9%, against 8.3% nationally.
The route pages show both figures for each route and each carrier. When the gap between carriers on a route is large, the route page and the carrier's own page for that route are worth reading before you book.
Who flies them
Alaska Airlines carries the largest share of inter-island flights, 49.1% of those on the routes in the table. Where more than one carrier flies a route, the carrier comparison on the route page shows whether they differ, and the same route, different airline guide explains how to read those gaps.
Read that carrier split with one fact from the filings in mind. Hawaiian is reported under its own code only from August to December 2025; from January 2026 the same flights, inter-island included, appear under Alaska's code. I noticed it when the Honolulu to Kahului route split into two carrier files for the same flights. A Hawaiian-against-Alaska gap on an island route compares two periods, not two operations.
How I would plan an island hop
- Fly early when you can. The first flights of the day start with aircraft that have not yet flown, which protects them from delays earlier in the schedule.
- Do not plan a tight same-day connection to a mainland flight. If an island hop feeds a long flight home, leave far more time than the short flight suggests, because a missed long-haul connection is much harder to fix. I would not book the two on separate tickets at all.
- Check the month. The route pages show whether a route has a weak month, and the Honolulu and Kahului airport month pages show how the whole airport ran.
- Keep flexibility for cancellations. On a short trip, a later flight on the same day is the best protection, and it is easier to find early in the day than late.
A note on the figures
Routes are directional, so Honolulu to Kahului and Kahului to Honolulu are separate rows with separate records: 84.1% one way, 84.1% the other. Only routes with a page on this site appear, which means routes with at least 365 flights over the period.
data/generated/routes/HNL-OGG.json, trimmed to the headline fields
{
"flights": 9998,
"completed": 9882,
"onTimePct": 84.1,
"veryLatePct": 2.5,
"avgDelayMin": 39.7,
"medianArrDelay": 0,
"cancelPct": 1.11,
"divertPct": 0.05,
"causes": {
"carrier": 0.5227,
"weather": 0.0351,
"nas": 0.0761,
"security": 0.0027,
"lateAircraft": 0.3635
},
"byHourBlock": [93.9, 92.7, 79.1, 77.1, 83.1, 84.8 ],
"byMonth": [78.7, 79, 77.6, 79.2, 84, 85.5, 87.2, 83.8, 94.6, 90.1, 90.6, 79 ],
"byDow": [85.1, 88.4, 87.1, 83.3, 78.5, 83.6, 83.1 ]
}Percentages are shares of scheduled or completed flights as defined on the methodology page; byHourBlock runs 5am to overnight, byMonth January to December, byDow Monday to Sunday. Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, September 2025 to August 2026.
On-time means arriving less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the DOT's definition.
Common questions
Are inter-island flights more punctual than mainland flights? On average the routes in this guide ran above the national rate over the period shown at the top, but individual routes vary. The table's rank column places each route among every US route with a page.
Which island airport is the most reliable to fly from? Compare the route rows that start at each island in the table. The airport pages for the larger island airports also show every carrier and route from that airport with its own record.
Why do short flights struggle to recover delays? There is almost no cruise time to make up a late departure, and turnarounds between short legs are brief. A delay that starts early in the day can follow an aircraft through several flights.
Do flights to and from the mainland behave the same way? No. Long flights between Hawaii and the mainland have very different schedules and exposure to mainland airport congestion. Their own route pages cover them, and they are not included in this guide.
When is the best time of year for island hopping? Each route page has a month-by-month strip, and the Honolulu airport month pages show every month side by side. Look for the months where the on-time rate and the cancellation rate are both better than the route's annual figures, and plan the tightest parts of a trip for those.