Carrier route record
UALIH→LAX
United Airlines · Lihue to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 379
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 379 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Delta Air Lines, flew 365 at 91.3% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LIH to LAX record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 131 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 378 completed flights
Avg delay
57 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.2%
Every carrier on LIH to LAX, 1,539 flights
These figures cover 379 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on LIH to LAX
United flew 379 of the 1,539 flights on LIH to LAX, about 25% of it. Its 90.7% on time is 8 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.2%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two 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. 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 (this page) | 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
United flight numbers on LIH to LAX
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 379 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm218 flights91.2%
- 2pm–5pm76 flights88.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am85 flights91.8%
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is the strongest at 91.8% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
United on LIH to LAX through the year
- Jul–Sep 2025133 flights93.2%
- Oct–Dec 2025103 flights91.3%
- Jan–Mar 202641 flights78.0%
- Apr–Jun 2026102 flights92.2%
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 90.7% on time across 379 flights.
United on LIH to LAX did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 93.2% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.0%, a swing of 15 points on roughly 95 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, Monday is the strongest day at 96.4% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 86.5%. 10 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 59% of the 1,991 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.
- 59%Carrier
- 23%National Airspace System
- 18%Late-arriving aircraft
The largest share of delay minutes, 59%, 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 1,173 of the 1,991 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,991 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.6% 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 92.6% on time across 379 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 379 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. 379 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 90.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 378 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIH to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to LIH, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LIH to LAX91.3%
- American Airlines on LIH to LAX84.4%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to LAX67.0%
- Hawaiian Airlines on LIH to LAX66.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.