Route reliability record
SAN→OGG
San Diego to Kahului
- Flights
- 845
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,540 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 845 SAN to OGG flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly SAN to OGG: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.0% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.1%, against 83.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 60 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
46 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.71%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Alaska
84.9% on time across 727 flights
These figures cover 845 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 10 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 SAN to OGG
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alaska Airlines | 727 | 84.9% | 49 min | 0.83% | B+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 118 | 76.3% | 35 min | 0.00% | B+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 845 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am423 flights83.8%
- 11am–2pm60 flights90.0%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm362 flights82.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 90.0% on time, ahead of 5pm–8pm at 82.4%. 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 423 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
July is the worst month at 73.8% on time, 16 points below January, the best at 89.8%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. May was the busiest month here, with 93 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 79.5%. 9 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 49% of the 6,242 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%National Airspace System
- 14%Carrier
- 10%Extreme weather
49% 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 6,242 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 6,242 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.71%, below the national 1.81% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is 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 3.6% 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 2,540 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 77.0% on time across 846 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 845 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 OGG after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 845 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 83.6% 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
SAN to OGG questions
How often is SAN to OGG delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.4% of the 845 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 45 minutes on average.
How reliable is SAN to OGG compared with the rest of the country?
83.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SAN to OGG?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 90.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 82.4%, 8 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 July delays on SAN to OGG?
July is the weakest month at 73.8% on time, compared with 89.8% in January. Across the year that is 16 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
- OGG to SAN — the return legseparate record
- San Diego International (SAN) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SAN to OGG84.9%
- Southwest Airlines on SAN to OGG76.3%
- SAN to SFO, a related route65.0%
- HNL to OGG, a related route84.7%
- SAN to DEN, a related route79.2%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record84.9%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record76.3%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. SAN to OGG and OGG to SAN 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.