Route reliability record
KOA→OGG
Kailua-Kona to Kahului
- Flights
- 1,460
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 1,460 KOA to OGG flights, of which Hawaiian Airlines flew 552 at 90.0% on time.
Best time to fly KOA to OGG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 93.8% of the time and Monday flights 91.3%, against 86.8% for the route overall.
Hawaiian Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 90.0% on time across 552 flights.
Key figures
On time
86.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,457 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.21%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Hawaiian
90.0% on time across 552 flights
These figures cover 1,460 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on KOA to OGG
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Hawaiian Airlines arrives on time 90.0% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 81.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 543 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian Airlines | 552 | 90.0% | 40 min | 0.36% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 89.9% | 63 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 543 | 81.4% | 38 min | 0.18% | B+ |
Hawaiian leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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 | 89.9% | 89.9% | 0.00% | 2pm–5pm, Wed | — |
| 2. KOA → OGGKailua-Kona to Kahului | Hawaiian Airlines | 89.7% | 90.0% | 0.36% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 3. KOA → OGGKailua-Kona to Kahului | Alaska Airlines | 81.3% | 81.4% | 0.18% | 8am–11am, Mon | — |
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 12 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am405 flights93.8%
- 11am–2pm753 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm302 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 82.3% on time against 93.8% 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 753 flights scheduled in it.
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, Monday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Saturday the weakest at 81.7%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 61% of the 8,119 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
61% 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 8,119 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 18 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 8,119 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 93.8% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.21%, 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 actually 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 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 80.3% 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. 1,457 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 13.2% of the 1,460 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on KOA to OGG?
Hawaiian Airlines leads at 90.0% on time across 552 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 81.4%, a gap of 9 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 93.8% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 82.3%, 12 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
- Hawaiian Airlines on KOA to OGG90.0%
- Southwest Airlines on KOA to OGG89.9%
- Alaska Airlines on KOA to OGG81.4%
- KOA to HNL, a related route85.1%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- KOA to LAX, a related route86.8%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record90.0%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record89.9%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record81.4%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.