Route reliability record
LIH→SEA
Lihue to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,094
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,700 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,094 LIH to SEA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 88.0% on time.
Best time to fly LIH to SEA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Monday flights 86.4%, against 83.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,066 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.10%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
88.0% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,094 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
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to SEA
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Delta Air Lines arrives on time 88.0% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 81.3%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 729 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 88.0% | 77 min | 3.29% | A− |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 81.3% | 57 min | 1.51% | B |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.3% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Flight by flight
Flights on LIH to SEA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Lihue to Seattle
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 → SEALihue to Seattle | Delta Air Lines | 85.1% | 88.0% | 3.29% | 8pm–5am, Mon | DL 375 21:55 |
| 2. LIH → SEALihue to Seattle | Alaska Airlines | 80.1% | 81.3% | 1.51% | 8am–11am, Wed | AS 213 22:28 |
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 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 1,094 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am58 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm289 flights80.8%
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am729 flights84.2%
Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The weak window here is the middle of the day, not the evening: 11am–2pm runs 80.8% on time against 86.2% for 8am–11am. That shape usually means a departure bank rather than an accumulating delay, so the recovery later in the afternoon is real rather than noise. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 729 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LIH to SEA by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On LIH to SEA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.2% on time and the worst is 11am–2pm at 80.8%, a real gap of 5.4 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am86.2%
- 11am–2pm80.8%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am84.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 23 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.
December is the weak month at 65.5% on time, against 88.9% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. January was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 81.7%, a spread of 5 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 17 to one. The split is drawn from 10,902 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 86.2% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.10% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.46%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.1% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,700 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 73.0% on time across 1,094 flights, 11 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 11 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 1,094 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SEA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,094 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,066 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIH to SEA questions
How often is LIH to SEA 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 16.5% of the 1,094 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to SEA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 88.0% on time across 365 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 81.3%, a gap of 7 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 SEA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 80.8%, 5 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 December delays on LIH to SEA?
December is the weakest month at 65.5% on time, compared with 88.9% in April. Across the year that is 23 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
- SEA to LIH — the return legseparate record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on LIH to SEA88.0%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to SEA81.3%
- LIH to HNL, a related route84.1%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.0%
- LIH to LAX, a related route83.7%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.0%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record81.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. LIH to SEA and SEA 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.