Carrier route record
UALAX→KOA
United Airlines · Los Angeles to Kailua-Kona
- Flights
- 494
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 31%
- Carriers
- 5
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LAX to KOA 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 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 40 minutes. That rests on 494 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 365 at 81.1% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to KOA record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 115 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 488 completed flights
Avg delay
41 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.81%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.8%
Every carrier on LAX to KOA, 1,606 flights
These figures cover 494 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 LAX to KOA
United flew 494 of the 1,606 flights on LAX to KOA, about 31% of it. Its 89.1% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of five carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 95.7% to Alaska at 76.4%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
The two carriers here are closely matched: 5 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 95.7% | 23 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines (this page) | 494 | 89.1% | 41 min | 0.81% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 81.1% | 56 min | 1.37% | B |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 350 | 76.9% | 61 min | 0.29% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 374 | 76.4% | 42 min | 1.07% | B |
No carrier stands out. Delta tops the table at 81.1%, 5 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on LAX to KOA
Departure window
When United 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 494 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am373 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm1 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm120 flights83.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 91.1% on time for the 8am–11am window against 83.8% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 373 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LAX to KOA through the year
July is the worst month at 82.8% on time, 14 points below November, the best at 96.9%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. July was the busiest month here, with 65 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 94.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 82.4%. 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 2,176 reported delay minutes.
- 35%Carrier
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
The largest share of delay minutes, 35%, 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 767 of the 2,176 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,176 reported delay minutes.
32% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 698 minutes out of 2,176, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.81%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.6% 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 2,504 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 92.6% on time across 494 flights, 4 points above 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. 494 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 LAX to KOA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 494 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 89.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 488 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to KOA, every carrier
- United on KOA to LAX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to KOA81.1%
- American Airlines on LAX to KOA76.9%
- Alaska Airlines on LAX to KOA76.4%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.