Carrier route record

HAHNL→LIH

Hawaiian Airlines · Honolulu to Lihue

Flights: 3,056
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 39%
Carriers: 3

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

Hawaiian on HNL to LIH 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 3,056 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,770 at 91.8% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Hawaiian's HNL to LIH record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 100 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

87.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,026 completed flights

Avg delay

38 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.85%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.9%

Every carrier on HNL to LIH, 7,755 flights

These figures cover 3,056 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Hawaiian against every carrier on HNL to LIH

Hawaiian flew 3,056 of the 7,755 flights on HNL to LIH, about 39% of it. Its 87.6% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 91.8% to Alaska at 77.7%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 91.8% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 77.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,929 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on HNL to LIH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,770	91.8%	56 min	0.45%	A+
Hawaiian Airlines (this page)	3,056	87.6%	38 min	0.85%	A+
Alaska Airlines	2,929	77.7%	40 min	2.53%	B

The spread between Southwest and Alaska is 14 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 14 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Hawaiian runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 15 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am489 flights94.8%
8am–11am523 flights93.1%
11am–2pm600 flights84.1%
2pm–5pm564 flights80.1%
5pm–8pm584 flights85.9%
8pm–5am296 flights90.9%

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

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.8% of the time, against 80.1% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 600 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Hawaiian on HNL to LIH through the year

Jul–Sep 20251,558 flights90.6%
Oct–Dec 20251,498 flights84.5%

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 87.6% on time across 3,056 flights.

Split by quarter, Hawaiian on HNL to LIH logged 1,558 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 1,498 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 87.6% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 90.8% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.1%. 9 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Hawaiian runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 58% of the 14,000 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.

Carrier
58%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
Extreme weather
9%
National Airspace System
1%
Security
1%

The largest share of delay minutes, 58%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 8,211 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 14,214 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.8% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.85%, 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 stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% 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 102 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 85.0% on time across 3,057 flights, within 3 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.

The sample behind these figures is 3,056 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Hawaiian on HNL to LIH

Put together: take the 5am–8am departure, avoid the peak month if the dates are flexible, and if two carriers are within a few dollars of each other, Southwest is the one with the record behind it. None of that guarantees an on-time arrival; it moves the odds by 15 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 3,026 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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