Route reliability record
LIH→OGG
Lihue to Kahului
- Flights
- 1,460
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 202 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 5 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 40 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,460 LIH to OGG flights, of which Hawaiian Airlines flew 552 at 87.1% on time.
Best time to fly LIH to OGG: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 86.8%, against 83.0% for the route overall.
Hawaiian Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 87.1% on time across 552 flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,455 completed flights
Avg delay
40 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Hawaiian
87.1% on time across 552 flights
These figures cover 1,460 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to OGG
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Hawaiian Airlines arrives on time 87.1% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 78.0%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 543 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hawaiian Airlines | 552 | 87.1% | 37 min | 0.36% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 84.3% | 51 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 543 | 78.0% | 37 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Hawaiian leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Lihue to Kahului
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 → OGGLihue to Kahului | Hawaiian Airlines | 86.8% | 87.1% | 0.36% | 8am–11am, Tue | — |
| 2. LIH → OGGLihue to Kahului | Southwest Airlines | 84.3% | 84.3% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, Tue | — |
| 3. LIH → OGGLihue to Kahului | Alaska Airlines | 78.0% | 78.0% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
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 15 points, against 9 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am415 flights92.0%
- 11am–2pm724 flights80.6%
- 2pm–5pm321 flights76.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 92.0% of the time, against 76.9% for the afternoon window. That is 15 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 724 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 93.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 86.8% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.8%. 7 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. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 62% of the 9,978 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.
- 62%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 4%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
62% 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 9,978 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 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 9,978 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 92.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.14%, 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 2.7% 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 202 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.6% on time across 1,460 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,460 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 OGG 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. September runs 93.3% on time and March 65.9%, a swing of 27 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,455 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIH to OGG questions
How often is LIH to OGG 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 17.0% of the 1,460 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 40 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to OGG?
Hawaiian Airlines leads at 87.1% on time across 552 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 78.0%, a gap of 9 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 OGG?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 92.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 76.9%, 15 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 OGG?
March is the weakest month at 65.9% on time, compared with 93.3% in September. Across the year that is 27 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
- OGG to LIH — the return legseparate record
- Hawaiian Airlines on LIH to OGG87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on LIH to OGG84.3%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to OGG78.0%
- LIH to HNL, a related route84.2%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- LIH to LAX, a related route83.2%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record87.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record84.3%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record78.0%
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. LIH to OGG and OGG 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.