Carrier route record
WNKOA→OGG
Southwest Airlines · Kailua-Kona to Kahului
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on KOA to OGG 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 365 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Hawaiian Airlines, flew 366 at 91.5% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's KOA to OGG record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 145 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 364 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.27%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
86.9%
Every carrier on KOA to OGG, 1,460 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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
Southwest against every carrier on KOA to OGG
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,460 flights on KOA to OGG, about 25% of it. Its 91.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.9%. 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 82.2%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Hawaiian Airlines arrives on time 91.5% 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 (this page) | 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+ |
Hawaiian leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Departure window
When Southwest runs best on this route
Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 365 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm133 flights90.2%
- 2pm–5pm232 flights92.7%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 92.7% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
Southwest on KOA to OGG through the year
January is the weak month at 80.6% on time, against 100.0% in July. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 96.2% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.4%, a spread of 14 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on KOA to OGG runs when it is late
Southwest on KOA to OGG often beats the schedule: 157 of 364 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 30 late arrivals split 9 under half an hour, 12 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 9 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early157 flights43.1%
- Within 15 min177 flights48.6%
- 15–29 min late9 flights2.5%
- 30–59 min late12 flights3.3%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 364 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 36 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 12 still arrived on time. Only 6 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on KOA to OGG
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 October 2025, 3 hours 43 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 October 2025 | 3 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 January 2026 | 3 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 21 March 2026 | 3 hours 17 minutes | None reported |
| 30 October 2025 | 2 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 14 March 2026 | 2 hours 28 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 1,776 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%Carrier
- 12%National Airspace System
66% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,776 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 to one. The split is drawn from 1,776 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.27%, 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 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 87.4% on time across 365 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 Southwest on KOA to OGG
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 91.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 364 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- KOA to OGG, every carrier
- Southwest on OGG to KOA, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on KOA to OGG91.5%
- Alaska Airlines on KOA to OGG82.2%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Kahului Airport (OGG) 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.