Carrier route record
DLSEA→LIH
Delta Air Lines · Seattle to Lihue
- Flights
- 365
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on SEA to LIH sits in the middle of the pack with a C. Close to three flights in four arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 3 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 365 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, so there is little to separate Delta on SEA to LIH from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
74.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 359 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.64%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
73.0%
Every carrier on SEA to LIH, 1,094 flights
These figures cover 365 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 4 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
Delta against every carrier on SEA to LIH
Delta flew 365 of the 1,094 flights on SEA to LIH, about 33% of it. Its 74.7% on time is 2 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 73.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Delta at 74.7% to Alaska at 72.2%.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 365 | 74.7% | 69 min | 1.64% | C |
| Alaska Airlines | 729 | 72.2% | 53 min | 0.27% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on SEA to LIH
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Departure window
When Delta 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.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Delta's SEA to LIH record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 74.7% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
Delta on SEA to LIH through the year
January is the weak month at 58.1% on time, against 93.5% 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. January was the busiest month here, with 31 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 80.8% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 69.2%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on SEA to LIH runs when it is late
Delta on SEA to LIH often beats the schedule: 96 of 359 completed flights, 27%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 91 late arrivals split 38 under half an hour, 29 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 24 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early96 flights26.7%
- Within 15 min172 flights47.9%
- 15–29 min late38 flights10.6%
- 30–59 min late29 flights8.1%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights2.2%
- 2+ hours late16 flights4.5%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 359 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
14 of 70 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 20% of them. In the other direction, 35 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 LIH.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on SEA to LIH
The latest arrival of the period was on 27 December 2025, 7 hours 4 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 27 December 2025 | 7 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 December 2025 | 6 hours 15 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 January 2026 | 5 hours 7 minutes | Carrier |
| 1 February 2026 | 4 hours 16 minutes | Carrier |
| 9 June 2026 | 4 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 45% of the 6,247 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 45%Carrier
- 32%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 45%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,780 of the 6,247 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 6,247 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.64% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.7% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 2,700 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 88.0% on time across 365 flights, 13 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 13 points of difference.
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 Delta on SEA 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 74.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 359 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
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.