Carrier route record
DLLIH→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Lihue to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 23%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LIH to LAX 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 365 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, United Airlines, flew 377 at 90.9% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LIH to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 137 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 356 completed flights
Avg delay
67 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.92%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.7%
Every carrier on LIH to LAX, 1,605 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Delta against every carrier on LIH to LAX
Delta flew 365 of the 1,605 flights on LIH to LAX, about 23% of it. Its 91.0% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 91.3% to Hawaiian at 65.6%. Three 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 90.9% of the time; American Airlines manages 84.7%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 446 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 23 | 91.3% | 28 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 365 | 91.0% | 67 min | 1.92% | A |
| United Airlines | 377 | 90.9% | 51 min | 0.80% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 446 | 84.7% | 110 min | 0.67% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 272 | 69.9% | 52 min | 0.74% | C+ |
| Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample | 122 | 65.6% | 41 min | 0.00% | C+ |
United leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LIH to LAX
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Departure window
When Delta 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 365 flights.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 91.0% on time across 365 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 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LIH to LAX through the year
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights—
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.6%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.2%
- Jul–Sep 202662 flights93.5%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. 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 91.0% on time across 365 flights.
Delta on LIH to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Oct–Dec 2025 at 94.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.6%, a swing of 12 points on roughly 91 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 98.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 85.7%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on LIH to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on LIH to LAX often beats the schedule: 142 of 356 completed flights, 40%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 32 late arrivals split 10 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early142 flights39.9%
- Within 15 min182 flights51.1%
- 15–29 min late10 flights2.8%
- 30–59 min late11 flights3.1%
- 1–2 hours late5 flights1.4%
- 2+ hours late6 flights1.7%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 356 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 34 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 12 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on LIH to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 10 April 2026, 4 hours 9 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 10 April 2026 | 4 hours 9 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 11 May 2026 | 3 hours 45 minutes | Carrier |
| 27 December 2025 | 3 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 10 May 2026 | 2 hours 46 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 January 2026 | 2 hours 32 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 2,142 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
46% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,142 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 to one. The split is drawn from 2,142 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 34%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 734 of the 2,142 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.92% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 82.0% on time across 365 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 Delta on LIH to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 91.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 356 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIH to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to LIH, the return leg
- United Airlines on LIH to LAX90.9%
- American Airlines on LIH to LAX84.7%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to LAX69.9%
- Hawaiian Airlines on LIH to LAX65.6%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best day of the week to fly, and why it is the second lever
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.