Carrier route record
UAKOA→SFO
United Airlines · Kailua-Kona to San Francisco
- Flights
- 861
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 80%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on KOA to SFO 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 about an hour. That rests on 861 flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's KOA to SFO record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 89 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 849 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.05%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.4%
Every carrier on KOA to SFO, 1,079 flights
These figures cover 861 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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
United against every carrier on KOA to SFO
United flew 861 of the 1,079 flights on KOA to SFO, most of the route. Its 86.5% on time is 3 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.4%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 86.5% to Alaska at 71.4%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 861 | 86.5% | 67 min | 1.05% | A |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 71.4% | 61 min | 0.46% | C+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on KOA to SFO
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am41 flights100.0%
- 8am–11am1 flights—
- 11am–2pm259 flights78.3%
- 2pm–5pm282 flights82.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am278 flights96.0%
Scale runs 70% 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 78.3% on time against 100.0% for 5am–8am. 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 282 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on KOA to SFO through the year
September is the best month on the calendar at 96.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. June was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 91.0% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.9%. 12 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United 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 7,705 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 21%National Airspace System
40% 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 7,705 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 7,705 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 2,986 of the 7,705 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.05% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.35%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% 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 2,368 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 runs 85.4% on time across 862 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 861 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 United on KOA to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 861 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 86.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 849 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- KOA to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to KOA, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on KOA to SFO71.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.