Carrier route record

ASKOA→HNL

Alaska Airlines · Kailua-Kona to Honolulu

Flights: 2,783
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 38%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on KOA to HNL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,783 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,770 at 95.3% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on KOA to HNL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

77.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,733 completed flights

Avg delay

46 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.80%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

85.1%

Every carrier on KOA to HNL, 7,280 flights

These figures cover 2,783 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

Alaska against every carrier on KOA to HNL

Alaska flew 2,783 of the 7,280 flights on KOA to HNL, about 38% of it. Its 77.4% on time is 8 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 95.3% to Alaska at 77.4%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 95.3% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 86.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 2,727 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on KOA to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,770	95.3%	59 min	1.19%	A
Hawaiian Airlines	2,727	86.4%	43 min	0.66%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	2,783	77.4%	46 min	1.80%	B

Southwest leads Hawaiian by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 18 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am267 flights89.8%
8am–11am435 flights80.7%
11am–2pm481 flights73.6%
2pm–5pm800 flights72.3%
5pm–8pm553 flights76.6%
8pm–5am247 flights83.0%

Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.8% of the time, against 72.3% for the afternoon window. That is 18 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 800 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on KOA to HNL through the year

Jan–Mar 20261,415 flights75.6%
Apr–Jun 20261,368 flights79.2%

Scale runs 65% to 85%. 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 77.4% on time across 2,783 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on KOA to HNL logged 1,415 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 1,368 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 77.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 82.3% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 60% of the 28,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
60%
Carrier
25%
National Airspace System
8%
Extreme weather
6%
Security
0%

60% 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 28,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 28,093 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 89.8% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.5% 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 163 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 81.9% on time across 2,781 flights, 5 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 5 points of difference.

The sample behind these figures is 2,783 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 Alaska on KOA to HNL

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 18 points, which is the most any booking decision can do. 2,733 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