Route reliability record
KOA→OGG
Kailua-Kona to Kahului
- Flights
- 1,460
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 84 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 1,460 KOA to OGG flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 365 at 91.8% on time.
Best time to fly KOA to OGG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Tuesday flights 90.4%, against 86.9% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 91.8% on time across 365 flights.
Key figures
On time
86.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,454 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.41%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Southwest
91.8% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,460 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 2 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on KOA to OGG
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 91.8% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 82.2%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 729 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 91.8% | 66 min | 0.27% | A+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 366 | 91.5% | 46 min | 0.55% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 82.2% | 38 min | 0.41% | B+ |
Southwest leads Alaska by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kailua-Kona to Kahului
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. KOA → OGGKailua-Kona to Kahului | Southwest Airlines | 91.6% | 91.8% | 0.27% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 2. KOA → OGGKailua-Kona to Kahului | Hawaiian Airlines | 91.0% | 91.5% | 0.55% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 3. KOA → OGGKailua-Kona to Kahului | Alaska Airlines | 81.9% | 82.2% | 0.41% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am405 flights92.8%
- 11am–2pm658 flights82.5%
- 2pm–5pm397 flights88.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
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 82.5% on time against 92.8% for 8am–11am. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 658 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter KOA to OGG by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On KOA to OGG, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 92.8% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 82.5%, a wide gap of 10.3 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am92.8%
- 11am–2pm82.5%
- 2–5pm88.4%
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
September is the best month on the calendar at 95.0% 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 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 84.5%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 8,102 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 63%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
63% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 8,102 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 to one. The split is drawn from 8,102 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.41%, below the national 1.89% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 84 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 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 1,460 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,460 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in OGG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 95.0% on time and March 75.8%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,454 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
KOA to OGG questions
How often is KOA to OGG delayed?
About one flight in eight arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.1% of the 1,460 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on KOA to OGG?
Southwest Airlines leads at 91.8% on time across 365 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 82.2%, a gap of 10 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on KOA to OGG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 82.5%, 10 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on KOA to OGG?
March is the weakest month at 75.8% on time, compared with 95.0% in September. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- OGG to KOA — the return legseparate record
- Kahului Airport (OGG) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on KOA to OGG91.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on KOA to OGG91.5%
- Alaska Airlines on KOA to OGG82.2%
- KOA to HNL, a related route83.8%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.1%
- KOA to LAX, a related route86.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record91.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record91.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record82.2%
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. KOA to OGG and OGG to KOA are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.