Carrier route record

ASLAX→LIH

Alaska Airlines · Los Angeles to Lihue

Flights: 197
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on LAX to LIH lands a B, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 35 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 197 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 379 at 92.6% on time.

United Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 92.6% on time across 379 flights.

On time

78.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 194 completed flights

Avg delay

36 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.02%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.1%

Every carrier on LAX to LIH, 1,539 flights

These figures cover 197 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 4 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

Alaska against every carrier on LAX to LIH

Alaska flew 197 of the 1,539 flights on LAX to LIH, about 13% of it. Its 78.4% on time is 6 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number five of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 95.7% to American at 77.6%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. United Airlines arrives on time 92.6% of the time; American Airlines manages 77.6%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 391 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LAX to LIH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	23	95.7%	176 min	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	379	92.6%	47 min	0.00%	A+
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample	184	85.2%	51 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	365	83.9%	82 min	1.10%	B
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	197	78.4%	36 min	1.02%	B
American Airlines	391	77.6%	48 min	0.00%	B+

The spread between United and American is 15 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 15 more arrivals inside the on-time window.

Departure window

When Alaska 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 197 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's LAX to LIH record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 78.4% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on LAX to LIH through the year

Jan–Mar 202694 flights76.9%
Apr–Jun 2026103 flights79.6%

Scale runs 70% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 78.4% on time across 197 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on LAX to LIH logged 94 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 103 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 78.4% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 75.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 70.6%. 5 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 76% of the 1,491 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.

Carrier
76%
Late-arriving aircraft
15%
National Airspace System
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 76%, 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 1,127 of the 1,491 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,491 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 1.02% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.51%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.6% 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 2,615 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 67.0% on time across 197 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 197 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 Alaska on LAX to LIH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 197 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 78.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 194 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures