Carrier route record

HALAX→LIH

Hawaiian Airlines · Los Angeles to Lihue

Flights: 184
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 12%
Carriers: 6

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

Hawaiian on LAX to LIH 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 184 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

85.2%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 183 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.1%

Every carrier on LAX to LIH, 1,539 flights

These figures cover 184 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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

Hawaiian against every carrier on LAX to LIH

Hawaiian flew 184 of the 1,539 flights on LAX to LIH, about 12% of it. Its 85.2% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 84.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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 Airlines (this page)thin sample	184	85.2%	51 min	0.00%	A+
Delta Air Lines	365	83.9%	82 min	1.10%	B
Alaska Airlinesthin 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 Hawaiian 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 184 flights.

5am–8am35 flights91.4%
8am–11am149 flights83.8%
11am–2pm—
2pm–5pm—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 91.4% on time for the 5am–8am window against 83.8% for 8am–11am. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 149 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Hawaiian on LAX to LIH through the year

Jul–Sep 202592 flights83.5%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights87.0%

Scale runs 75% to 90%. 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 85.2% on time across 184 flights.

Split by quarter, Hawaiian on LAX to LIH logged 92 flights in Jul–Sep 2025 and 92 flights in Oct–Dec 2025. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 85.2% annual figure is the one to use.

Delay causes

Why Hawaiian runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 49% of the 1,364 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
49%
Late-arriving aircraft
32%
National Airspace System
15%
Extreme weather
4%

The largest share of delay minutes, 49%, 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 670 of the 1,364 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,364 reported delay minutes.

The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.4% on time here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are 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 3.8% 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 66.3% on time across 184 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 184 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 Hawaiian on LAX to LIH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 184 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 85.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 183 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