Carrier route record

DLLIH→LAX

Delta Air Lines · Lihue to Los Angeles

Flights: 365
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 24%
Carriers: 6

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. 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 379 at 90.7% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LIH to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 137 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.3%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 355 completed flights

Avg delay

65 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.19%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

83.2%

Every carrier on LIH to LAX, 1,539 flights

These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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

Delta against every carrier on LIH to LAX

Delta flew 365 of the 1,539 flights on LIH to LAX, about 24% of it. Its 91.3% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 91.3% to Hawaiian at 66.3%. 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 90.7% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LIH to LAX
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Delta Air Lines (this page)	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+

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

DL 43520:3591.3% · 365 flights

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 91.3% 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 202592 flights95.6%
Oct–Dec 202592 flights94.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights82.6%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights92.2%

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 91.3% on time across 365 flights.

Delta on LIH to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 95.6% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.6%, a swing of 13 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 83.7%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Delta runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 46% of the 1,998 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
46%
Carrier
32%
National Airspace System
18%
Extreme weather
4%

46% 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 1,998 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 11 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 1,998 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.55%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.8% 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 83.9% on time across 365 flights, 7 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 7 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 91.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 355 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