Route reliability record
LIH→SEA
Lihue to Seattle
- Flights
- 1,094
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,700 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 1,094 LIH to SEA flights, of which Delta Air Lines flew 365 at 88.5% on time.
Best time to fly LIH to SEA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.0% of the time and Thursday flights 87.5%, against 84.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 70 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,065 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
88.5% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,094 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
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to SEA
The two carriers here are closely matched: 6 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 88.5% | 78 min | 3.84% | A− |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 82.7% | 66 min | 1.37% | B |
Delta Air Lines cancels 3.8% 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.
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% | 88.5% | 3.84% | 8pm–5am, Mon | DL 375 21:40 |
| 2. LIH → SEALihue to Seattle | Alaska Airlines | 81.6% | 82.7% | 1.37% | 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 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–11am109 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm238 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am729 flights84.7%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. 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 81.9% on time against 89.0% 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.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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 90.9% in July. 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, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Saturday the weakest at 80.9%. 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 55% of the 11,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 24%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
55% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 11,279 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 89.0% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.46%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.5% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over 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 73.1% on time across 1,094 flights, 12 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 12 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 84.6% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,065 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LIH to SEA questions
How often is LIH to SEA delayed?
Roughly 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 15.4% of the 1,094 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
Which airline is most reliable on LIH to SEA?
Delta Air Lines leads at 88.5% on time across 365 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 82.7%, a gap of 6 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 89.0% on time. The 11am–2pm window is the weakest at 81.9%, 7 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 90.9% in July. Across the year that is 25 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 SEA88.5%
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to SEA82.7%
- LIH to HNL, a related route84.2%
- LAX to SEA, a related route85.4%
- LIH to LAX, a related route83.2%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record88.5%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record82.7%
- 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.