Carrier route record
DLLIH→SEA
Delta Air Lines · Lihue to Seattle
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on LIH to SEA 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 11 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 365 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's LIH to SEA record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 109 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 347 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
3.84%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
84.6%
Every carrier on LIH to SEA, 1,094 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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
Delta against every carrier on LIH to SEA
Delta flew 365 of the 1,094 flights on LIH to SEA, about 33% of it. Its 88.5% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first 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 (this page) | 365 | 88.5% | 78 min | 3.84% | A− |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 82.7% | 66 min | 1.37% | B |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on LIH to SEA
Departure window
When Delta 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 365 flights.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 88.5% on time across 365 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 365 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on LIH to SEA through the year
- Jul–Sep 202592 flights96.6%
- Oct–Dec 202592 flights76.2%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights86.9%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights93.3%
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 88.5% on time across 365 flights.
Delta on LIH to SEA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 96.6% on time and its weakest Oct–Dec 2025 at 76.2%, a swing of 20 points on roughly 91 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 95.9% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 82.0%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 69% of the 3,099 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.
- 69%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
69% 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 3,099 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 3,099 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations run at 3.84%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 25 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 2,700 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 75.8% on time across 365 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 365 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 Delta on LIH to SEA
Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 3.84% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you a little over an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 8pm–5am departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 347 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.