Carrier route record
ASLIH→SEA
Alaska Airlines · Lihue to Seattle
- Flights
- 729
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 67%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.
Alaska on LIH to SEA 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 an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 729 flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's LIH to SEA record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 51 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
82.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 718 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.37%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.6%
Every carrier on LIH to SEA, 1,094 flights
These figures cover 729 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Alaska against every carrier on LIH to SEA
Alaska flew 729 of the 1,094 flights on LIH to SEA, most of the route. Its 82.7% on time is 2 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 88.5% to Alaska at 82.7%.
Only one carrier clears this site's 365-flight floor here, so there is no comparison to draw. The table below is the full picture.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 365 | 88.5% | 78 min | 3.84% | A− |
| Alaska Airlines (this page) | 729 | 82.7% | 66 min | 1.37% | B |
Departure window
When Alaska 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 729 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am109 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm238 flights81.9%
- 2pm–5pm18 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am364 flights81.0%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 89.0% of the time, against 81.0% for the overnight window. That is 8 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 364 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Alaska on LIH to SEA through the year
June is the worst month at 75.0% on time, 17 points below January, the best at 91.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. January was the busiest month here, with 62 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 86.4% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.6%. 8 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Alaska runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 8,180 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 28%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 8%Extreme weather
49% 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 8,180 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 6 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 8,180 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 1.37% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.14%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.0% 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 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 71.8% on time across 729 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. 729 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 Alaska on LIH to SEA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 729 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 82.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 718 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIH to SEA, every carrier
- Alaska on SEA to LIH, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LIH to SEA88.5%
- Alaska Airlines network-wide record
- Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- 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.