Route reliability record
OGG→SAN
Kahului to San Diego
- Flights
- 846
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,540 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, level with the national rate of 77.6%. Roughly one flight in four arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 846 OGG to SAN flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly OGG to SAN: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 79.5% of the time and Thursday flights 83.9%, against 77.0% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
77.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
48 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
74.8% on time across 728 flights
These figures cover 846 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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
Which airline is most reliable on OGG to SAN
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 89.8% | 48 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Alaska Airlines | 728 | 74.8% | 47 min | 1.92% | C |
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 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm207 flights79.5%
- 2pm–5pm157 flights67.5%
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am482 flights79.0%
Scale runs 60% to 85%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 79.5% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 67.5%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 482 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 39 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.
December is the weak month at 52.6% on time, against 91.4% in May. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 83.9% on time and Friday the weakest at 66.7%. 17 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 43% of the 9,017 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 8%Extreme weather
43% 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 9,017 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 9,017 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.65% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.83%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
5.0% 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 roughly 50 minutes, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,540 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 83.6% on time across 845 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 846 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in SAN after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 846 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 77.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 825 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
OGG to SAN questions
How often is OGG to SAN delayed?
Roughly 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 23.0% of the 846 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is OGG to SAN compared with the rest of the country?
77.0% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of half a point against it. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on OGG to SAN?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 79.5% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 67.5%, 12 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 December delays on OGG to SAN?
December is the weakest month at 52.6% on time, compared with 91.4% in May. Across the year that is 39 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
- SAN to OGG — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on OGG to SAN89.8%
- Alaska Airlines on OGG to SAN74.8%
- OGG to HNL, a related route84.7%
- SFO to SAN, a related route66.6%
- OGG to LAX, a related route80.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record89.8%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record74.8%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. OGG to SAN and SAN to OGG are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed OGG to SAN’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.