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DelayAtlas

Carrier route record

UALIH→LAX

United Airlines · Lihue to Los Angeles

Flights
377
Period
September 2025 to August 2026
Share of route
23%
Carriers
6
A+GRADE

Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United 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 50 minutes. That rests on 377 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 365 at 91.0% on time.

Set against the rest of the country, United's LIH to LAX record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 136 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

Key figures

On time

90.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 374 completed flights

Avg delay

51 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.80%

National rate is 1.89%

Whole route

83.7%

Every carrier on LIH to LAX, 1,605 flights

These figures cover 377 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

United against every carrier on LIH to LAX

United flew 377 of the 1,605 flights on LIH to LAX, about 23% of it. Its 90.9% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number three 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. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 91.0% 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.

On-time performance by carrier on LIH to LAX
AirlineFlightsOn timeAvg delayCancelledGrade
Southwest Airlinesthin sample2391.3%28 min0.00%A+
Delta Air Lines36591.0%67 min1.92%A
United Airlines (this page)37790.9%51 min0.80%A+
American Airlines44684.7%110 min0.67%B+
Alaska Airlinesthin sample27269.9%52 min0.74%C+
Hawaiian Airlinesthin sample12265.6%41 min0.00%C+

Delta leads American by 6 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.

Flight by flight

United flight numbers on LIH to LAX

Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.

Departure window

When United 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 377 flights.

  • 5am–8am—
  • 8am–11am—
  • 11am–2pm220 flights89.9%
  • 2pm–5pm76 flights88.2%
  • 5pm–8pm—
  • 8pm–5am81 flights96.2%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 96.2% on time. The full set of windows spans 8 points.

Across the year

United on LIH to LAX through the year

  • Jul–Sep 202525 flights—
  • Oct–Dec 2025103 flights91.3%
  • Jan–Mar 202641 flights78.0%
  • Apr–Jun 2026102 flights92.2%
  • Jul–Sep 2026106 flights94.2%

Scale runs 70% 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 90.9% on time across 377 flights.

United on LIH to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2026 at 94.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.0%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 94 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, Tuesday is the strongest day at 96.9% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.9%, a spread of 12 points.

On-time rate by day of the week94.5Mon96.9Tue92.2Wed85.2Thu88.9Fri94.7Sat84.9Sun
Monday: 94.5 percent on time. Tuesday: 96.9 percent on time. Wednesday: 92.2 percent on time. Thursday: 85.2 percent on time. Friday: 88.9 percent on time. Saturday: 94.7 percent on time. Sunday: 84.9 percent on time

Arrival by arrival

How late United on LIH to LAX runs when it is late

United on LIH to LAX often beats the schedule: 159 of 374 completed flights, 43%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 24 of the 34 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 4 reached an hour or more.

  • 15+ min early159 flights42.5%
  • Within 15 min181 flights48.4%
  • 15–29 min late24 flights6.4%
  • 30–59 min late6 flights1.6%
  • 1–2 hours late3 flights0.8%
  • 2+ hours late1 flights0.3%

Scale runs 0% to 100%.

Share of 374 completed flights by arrival against schedule.

Only 19 of 374 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.

The worst days

Worst days for United on LIH to LAX

The latest arrival of the period was on 1 January 2026, 12 hours 28 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.

The latest arrivals of United on LIH to LAX in the period
DateArrived late byLargest filed cause
1 January 202612 hours 28 minutesCarrier
4 January 20261 hour 13 minutesNational Airspace System
7 August 20261 hour 8 minutesCarrier
31 July 20261 hourCarrier
17 May 202657 minutesLate-arriving aircraft

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

Carrier accounts for 59% of the 1,718 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.

  • Carrier
    59%
  • National Airspace System
    29%
  • Late-arriving aircraft
    11%

The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,020 of the 1,718 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,718 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.80%, below the national 1.89% 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.1% 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 94.7% on time across 377 flights, 4 points above 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 4 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 377 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 United on LIH to LAX

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 377 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 90.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 374 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Related

Where to go next

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.