Route reliability record
LIH→LAX
Lihue to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,539
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,615 mi
- Carriers
- 6
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,539 LIH to LAX flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 91.3% on time.
Best time to fly LIH to LAX: a 8pm–5am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.8%, against 83.2% for the route overall.
Delta Air Lines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 91.3% on time across 365 flights.
Key figures
On time
83.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,525 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
91.3% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,539 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to LAX
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 91.3% of the time; American Airlines manages 84.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 391 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 91.3% | 65 min | 2.19% | A |
| United Airlines | 379 | 90.7% | 57 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 87.0% | 65 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 391 | 84.4% | 92 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 197 | 67.0% | 45 min | 1.02% | C |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 184 | 66.3% | 39 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Delta leads American by 7 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LIH to LAX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Lihue to Los Angeles
Every airline on this route, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time, with its best departure time and most punctual flight number. No nearby airport pair beat these.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. LIH → LAXLihue to Los Angeles | United Airlines | 90.5% | 90.7% | 0.26% | 8pm–5am, Mon | UA 1296 13:13 |
| 2. LIH → LAXLihue to Los Angeles | Delta Air Lines | 89.3% | 91.3% | 2.19% | 8pm–5am, Wed | DL 435 20:35 |
| 3. LIH → LAXLihue to Los Angeles | American Airlines | 84.4% | 84.4% | 0.00% | 8pm–5am, Tue | AA 266 13:45 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 17 points, against 7 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm630 flights81.6%
- 2pm–5pm311 flights73.1%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am598 flights90.3%
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 90.3% on time across 598 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 630 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
Delays peak in March, when the on-time rate falls to 70.5%. June is the strongest month at 89.0%. Moving a flexible trip across that boundary buys 19 points. June was the busiest month here, with 173 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 77.7%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 44% of the 15,000 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.
- 44%Carrier
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 11%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
42% 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 15,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 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 15,079 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 44%, 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 6,692 of the 15,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, 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 actually 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 runs 84.1% on time across 1,539 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 1,539 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. June runs 89.0% on time and March 70.5%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,525 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIH to LAX questions
How often is LIH to LAX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.8% of the 1,539 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to LAX?
Delta Air Lines leads at 91.3% on time across 365 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 84.4%, a gap of 7 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LIH to LAX?
The 8pm–5am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 73.1%, 17 points behind. Later departures inherit delays from earlier flights the same aircraft has already flown, which is why the curve slopes the way it does.
How bad are March delays on LIH to LAX?
March is the weakest month at 70.5% on time, compared with 89.0% in June. Across the year that is 19 points between the best and worst months. Moving flexible dates out of that month is one of the few things that reliably helps.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to LIH — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LIH to LAX91.3%
- United Airlines on LIH to LAX90.7%
- American Airlines on LIH to LAX84.4%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to LAX67.0%
- Hawaiian Airlines on LIH to LAX66.3%
- LIH to HNL, a related route84.2%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- LIH to OGG, a related route83.0%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record91.3%
- United Airlines on-time record90.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record87.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. LIH to LAX and LAX to LIH are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.