Route reliability record
SFO→KOA
San Francisco to Kailua-Kona
- Flights
- 1,080
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,368 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns an A+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 9 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 50 minutes. That rests on 1,080 SFO to KOA flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to KOA: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.3% of the time and Tuesday flights 89.8%, against 86.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 9 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 87 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
86.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,073 completed flights
Avg delay
52 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.28%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
85.4% on time across 862 flights
These figures cover 1,080 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 SFO to KOA
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 Airlinesthin sample | 218 | 89.9% | 62 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 862 | 85.4% | 50 min | 0.35% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to KOA
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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 1,080 flights.
- 5am–8am237 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am470 flights87.8%
- 11am–2pm52 flights84.3%
- 2pm–5pm28 flights—
- 5pm–8pm293 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 90.3% of the time, against 80.8% for the evening window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 470 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
August is the worst month at 78.3% on time, 15 points below January, the best at 93.3%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 146 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Wednesday the weakest at 78.9%. 11 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 7,662 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 17%National Airspace System
41% 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 7,662 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 41 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 7,662 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 3,155 of the 7,662 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.28%, 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 4.3% 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 2,368 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 runs 83.4% on time across 1,079 flights, within 3 points 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. 1,080 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 KOA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 1,080 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 86.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,073 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to KOA questions
How often is SFO to KOA delayed?
About one flight in seven arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 13.7% of the 1,080 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SFO to KOA compared with the rest of the country?
86.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 9 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on SFO to KOA?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 90.3% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 80.8%, 10 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 August delays on SFO to KOA?
August is the weakest month at 78.3% on time, compared with 93.3% in January. Across the year that is 15 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
- KOA to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to KOA89.9%
- United Airlines on SFO to KOA85.4%
- SFO to LAX, a related route73.9%
- HNL to KOA, a related route86.1%
- SFO to SEA, a related route73.7%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record89.9%
- United Airlines on-time record85.4%
- 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. SFO to KOA and KOA to SFO 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.