Carrier route record

ASLIH→HNL

Alaska Airlines · Lihue to Honolulu

Flights: 2,932
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 38%
Carriers: 3

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

Alaska on LIH to HNL lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,932 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Southwest Airlines, flew 1,770 at 94.8% on time.

The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate Alaska on LIH to HNL from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.

On time

76.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,846 completed flights

Avg delay

47 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.86%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.2%

Every carrier on LIH to HNL, 7,759 flights

These figures cover 2,932 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.

Carrier by carrier

Alaska against every carrier on LIH to HNL

Alaska flew 2,932 of the 7,759 flights on LIH to HNL, about 38% of it. Its 76.9% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 94.8% to Alaska at 76.9%.

The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 94.8% of the time; Hawaiian Airlines manages 85.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 3,057 flights means less than a ten-point one.

On-time performance by carrier on LIH to HNL
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Southwest Airlines	1,770	94.8%	69 min	0.56%	A+
Hawaiian Airlines	3,057	85.0%	41 min	0.88%	A+
Alaska Airlines (this page)	2,932	76.9%	47 min	2.86%	B

Southwest leads Hawaiian by 10 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Departure window

When Alaska runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 26 points, against 10 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.

5am–8am443 flights90.3%
8am–11am504 flights84.1%
11am–2pm524 flights75.4%
2pm–5pm627 flights64.1%
5pm–8pm552 flights73.7%
8pm–5am282 flights80.2%

Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 64.1% for the afternoon window. That is 26 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 627 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

Alaska on LIH to HNL through the year

Jan–Mar 20261,478 flights72.3%
Apr–Jun 20261,454 flights81.4%

Scale runs 65% 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 76.9% on time across 2,932 flights.

Split by quarter, Alaska on LIH to HNL logged 1,478 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 1,454 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 76.9% annual figure is the one to use.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 83.0% on time and Friday the weakest at 67.4%. 16 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 63% of the 31,000 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
63%
Carrier
23%
Extreme weather
7%
National Airspace System
6%
Security
0%

63% 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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 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 30,958 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 90.3% on time here.

Cancellations run at 2.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

5.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last roughly 45 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.

At 102 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.

The return leg runs 77.7% on time across 2,929 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.

The sample behind these figures is 2,932 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.

What to do with this

Booking Alaska on LIH to HNL

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.86% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you roughly 45 minutes; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 5am–8am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 2,846 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