Carrier route record
WNHNL→LIH
Southwest Airlines · Honolulu to Lihue
- Flights
- 1,770
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 1,770 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Hawaiian Airlines, flew 3,056 at 87.6% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's HNL to LIH record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 142 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,762 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.45%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.9%
Every carrier on HNL to LIH, 7,755 flights
These figures cover 1,770 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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.
Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on HNL to LIH
Southwest flew 1,770 of the 7,755 flights on HNL to LIH, about 23% of it. Its 91.8% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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. Hawaiian Airlines arrives on time 87.6% 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 1,770 | 91.8% | 56 min | 0.45% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 3,056 | 87.6% | 38 min | 0.85% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 2,929 | 77.7% | 40 min | 2.53% | B |
Hawaiian leads Alaska by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am314 flights96.5%
- 8am–11am364 flights94.2%
- 11am–2pm304 flights84.9%
- 2pm–5pm62 flights95.2%
- 5pm–8pm364 flights92.3%
- 8pm–5am362 flights90.0%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 84.9% on time against 96.5% for 5am–8am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on HNL to LIH through the year
October is the best month on the calendar at 99.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 151 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 84.9%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 50% of the 7,886 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.
- 50%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 10%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
50% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. That is a cascade, and cascades start small and grow through the day. Across 7,886 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 26 to one. It is the strongest argument for booking the first departure of the morning, when the aircraft has been sitting at the gate overnight with nothing to inherit. The split is drawn from 7,886 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 3,002 of the 7,886 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.45%, 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 2.5% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 94.8% on time across 1,770 flights, 3 points above this direction. Departure banks, aircraft rotations and the congestion at each end all differ, so scoring the two directions together would average away a real 3 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,770 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 Southwest on HNL to LIH
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. October runs 99.3% on time and March 83.3%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,762 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- HNL to LIH, every carrier
- Southwest on LIH to HNL, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on HNL to LIH87.6%
- Alaska Airlines on HNL to LIH77.7%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Daniel K. Inouye International (HNL) delay statistics
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.