Route reliability record
OGG→LIH
Kahului to Lihue
- Flights
- 1,460
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 202 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C+. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 4 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land roughly 45 minutes behind schedule. That rests on 1,460 OGG to LIH flights, of which Southwest Airlines flew 365 at 82.7% on time.
Best time to fly OGG to LIH: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.2% of the time and Wednesday flights 80.2%, against 73.6% for the route overall.
Southwest Airlines is the most reliable of the three carriers covered here at 82.7% on time across 365 flights.
Key figures
On time
73.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,457 completed flights
Avg delay
43 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
82.7% on time across 365 flights
These figures cover 1,460 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. On-time means an arrival less than 15 minutes after the scheduled gate time, the same threshold the Department of Transportation uses in its own reports. Cancelled and diverted flights are excluded from the on-time rate and counted separately, which is why the cancellation column matters on its own.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on OGG to LIH
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Southwest Airlines arrives on time 82.7% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 63.8%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 543 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 365 | 82.7% | 46 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 552 | 77.1% | 39 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 543 | 63.8% | 44 min | 0.00% | D+ |
The spread between Southwest and Alaska is 19 points, wide enough that it should decide the booking. On a hundred trips that is 19 more arrivals inside the on-time window.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Kahului to Lihue
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. OGG → LIHKahului to Lihue | Southwest Airlines | 82.7% | 82.7% | 0.00% | 2pm–5pm, Tue | — |
| 2. OGG → LIHKahului to Lihue | Hawaiian Airlines | 77.1% | 77.1% | 0.00% | 8am–11am, Sun | — |
| 3. OGG → LIHKahului to Lihue | Alaska Airlines | 63.8% | 63.8% | 0.00% | 11am–2pm, 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 matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 16 points, against 19 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am123 flights86.2%
- 11am–2pm717 flights74.6%
- 2pm–5pm620 flights69.9%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.2% of the time, against 69.9% for the afternoon window. That is 16 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 717 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 89.2% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. January was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 80.2% on time and Friday the weakest at 68.3%. 12 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 61% of the 17,000 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.
- 61%Late-arriving aircraft
- 30%Carrier
- 5%Extreme weather
- 5%National Airspace System
61% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 16,542 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 are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.7% 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 202 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 83.0% on time across 1,460 flights, 9 points above 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 9 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,460 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LIH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 89.2% on time and March 59.7%, a swing of 30 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,457 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OGG to LIH questions
How often is OGG to LIH delayed?
About one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 26.4% of the 1,460 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
Which airline is most reliable on OGG to LIH?
Southwest Airlines leads at 82.7% on time across 365 flights. Alaska Airlines is at the other end on 63.8%, a gap of 19 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 OGG to LIH?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.2% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 69.9%, 16 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 March delays on OGG to LIH?
March is the weakest month at 59.7% on time, compared with 89.2% in September. Across the year that is 30 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
- LIH to OGG — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Airlines on OGG to LIH82.7%
- Hawaiian Airlines on OGG to LIH77.1%
- Alaska Airlines on OGG to LIH63.8%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.7%
- HNL to LIH, a related route84.9%
- OGG to LAX, a related route80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record82.7%
- Hawaiian Airlines on-time record77.1%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record63.8%
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Same route, different airline: where the carrier you pick matters most
Direction matters. OGG to LIH and LIH to OGG 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.