Carrier route record
UALIH→SFO
United Airlines · Lihue to San Francisco
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LIH to SFO 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 689 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LIH to SFO record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 125 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 679 completed flights
Avg delay
51 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
85.1%
Every carrier on LIH to SFO, 923 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
United against every carrier on LIH to SFO
United flew 689 of the 923 flights on LIH to SFO, most of the route. Its 89.8% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 85.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.8% to Alaska at 71.0%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 689 | 89.8% | 51 min | 1.31% | A |
| Alaska Airlinesthin sample | 234 | 71.0% | 61 min | 1.28% | C |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on LIH to SFO
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When United runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm239 flights88.9%
- 2pm–5pm227 flights85.4%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am223 flights95.4%
Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 95.4% on time across 223 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 239 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LIH to SFO through the year
January is the weak month at 79.5% on time, against 98.0% 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. July was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 93.2% on time and Monday the weakest at 85.7%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on LIH to SFO runs when it is late
United on LIH to SFO often beats the schedule: 298 of 679 completed flights, 44%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 69 late arrivals split 30 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 12 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early298 flights43.9%
- Within 15 min312 flights45.9%
- 15–29 min late30 flights4.4%
- 30–59 min late27 flights4.0%
- 1–2 hours late9 flights1.3%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 679 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
12 of 47 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 26% of them. In the other direction, 34 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at SFO.
The worst days
Worst days for United on LIH to SFO
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 April 2026, 11 hours 36 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as a late-arriving aircraft.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 April 2026 | 11 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 6 November 2025 | 3 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 January 2026 | 2 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 18 July 2026 | 1 hour 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 4 January 2026 | 1 hour 35 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 3,511 reported delay minutes.
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 32%Carrier
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,511 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 34 to one. The split is drawn from 3,511 reported delay minutes.
34% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 1,183 minutes out of 3,511, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations sit at 1.31% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 2,446 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 runs 87.7% on time across 689 flights, within 2 points of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 689 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 United on LIH to SFO
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 689 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 89.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 679 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LIH to SFO, every carrier
- United on SFO to LIH, the return leg
- Alaska Airlines on LIH to SFO71.0%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.