Carrier route record
WNOGG→LIH
Southwest Airlines · Kahului to Lihue
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 25%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Southwest Airlines.
Southwest on OGG to LIH 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 8 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 45 minutes. That rests on 365 flights. The strongest carrier on the route with a full sample, Hawaiian Airlines, flew 366 at 77.8% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, Southwest's OGG to LIH record is 8 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 76 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 365 completed flights
Avg delay
45 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
74.9%
Every carrier on OGG to LIH, 1,460 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
Southwest against every carrier on OGG to LIH
Southwest flew 365 of the 1,460 flights on OGG to LIH, about 25% of it. Its 84.9% on time is 10 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 74.9%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from Southwest at 84.9% to Alaska at 68.4%.
The choice of carrier is not cosmetic here. Hawaiian Airlines arrives on time 77.8% of the time; Alaska Airlines manages 68.4%. Sample sizes sit next to every figure, because a two-point gap across 729 flights means less than a ten-point one.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines (this page) | 365 | 84.9% | 45 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Hawaiian Airlines | 366 | 77.8% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 68.4% | 44 min | 0.27% | C+ |
Hawaiian leads Alaska by 9 points. Real, but small enough that a better departure time on the weaker carrier can outweigh it.
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Departure window
When Southwest 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.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm243 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm122 flights90.2%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
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 82.3% on time against 90.2% for 2pm–5pm. 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 243 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Southwest on OGG to LIH through the year
November is the best month on the calendar at 100.0% 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 31 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 80.8%, a spread of 10 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Southwest on OGG to LIH runs when it is late
Most of the lateness is short. 29 of the 55 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 15 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early59 flights16.2%
- Within 15 min251 flights68.8%
- 15–29 min late29 flights7.9%
- 30–59 min late11 flights3.0%
- 1–2 hours late12 flights3.3%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.8%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 365 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
11 of 55 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. 11 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for Southwest on OGG to LIH
The latest arrival of the period was on 3 January 2026, 2 hours 11 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 3 January 2026 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 30 May 2026 | 2 hours 3 minutes | Carrier |
| 26 December 2025 | 2 hours | National Airspace System |
| 2 January 2026 | 1 hour 52 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 1 hour 45 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why Southwest runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 2,476 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,476 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 2,476 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 910 of the 2,476 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.1% 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 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 2pm–5pm window matters as much as it does.
The return leg runs 85.9% on time across 365 flights, within about a point 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. 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 Southwest on OGG to LIH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 365 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 84.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 365 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- OGG to LIH, every carrier
- Southwest on LIH to OGG, the return leg
- Hawaiian Airlines on OGG to LIH77.8%
- Alaska Airlines on OGG to LIH68.4%
- Southwest Airlines network-wide record
- Kahului Airport (OGG) delay statistics
- Hawaii inter-island flights: how reliable is island hopping?
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
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.