Carrier route record
AAKOA→LAX
American Airlines · Kailua-Kona to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 350
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 22%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on KOA to LAX lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 2.3 hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 350 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 494 at 92.6% on time.
United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 92.6% on time across 494 flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 346 completed flights
Avg delay
139 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
86.8%
Every carrier on KOA to LAX, 1,606 flights
These figures cover 350 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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
American against every carrier on KOA to LAX
American flew 350 of the 1,606 flights on KOA to LAX, about 22% of it. Its 83.8% on time is 3 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 86.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number four of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 92.6% to Alaska at 78.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 92.6% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 78.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 374 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 494 | 92.6% | 54 min | 1.01% | A |
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 90.4% | 48 min | 3.01% | A− |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 87.0% | 43 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page)thin sample | 350 | 83.8% | 139 min | 0.86% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 374 | 78.4% | 57 min | 0.80% | B+ |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.0% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
American flight numbers on KOA to LAX
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 19 points, against 14 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm44 flights74.4%
- 2pm–5pm215 flights81.8%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am91 flights93.3%
Scale runs 65% 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 74.4% on time against 93.3% for 8pm–5am. 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 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 215 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on KOA to LAX through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights83.5%
- Oct–Dec 202577 flights79.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights88.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights83.3%
Scale runs 70% 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 83.8% on time across 350 flights.
Quarter by quarter American on KOA to LAX held fairly steady: 83.5% in Jul–Sep 2025, 79.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 88.6% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 83.3% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 9 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.5% on time and Friday the weakest at 78.8%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,801 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 14%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
Extreme weather accounts for 14% of delay minutes, well above the single-digit share typical across the system. Weather delays are lumpy: they arrive as whole bad days rather than as a steady drag, so the monthly strip above is the more useful view of the risk. The national share is 6%, so this operation carries roughly 2.2 times the usual weather exposure. The split is drawn from 7,801 reported delay minutes.
41% 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 7,801 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 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.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, 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
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about 2.3 hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,504 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 76.9% on time across 350 flights, 7 points below 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 350 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 American on KOA to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 350 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor and not enough to be confident to better than a couple of points. The 83.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 346 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- KOA to LAX, every carrier
- American on LAX to KOA, the return leg
- United Airlines on KOA to LAX92.6%
- Delta Air Lines on KOA to LAX90.4%
- Alaska Airlines on KOA to LAX78.4%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
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.