Carrier route record

ASSFO→KOA

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Kailua-Kona

Flights: 218
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 20%
Carriers: 2

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Alaska Airlines.

Alaska on SFO to KOA earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 218 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SFO to KOA record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 123 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.9%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 217 completed flights

Avg delay

62 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

86.3%

Every carrier on SFO to KOA, 1,080 flights

These figures cover 218 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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

Alaska against every carrier on SFO to KOA

Alaska flew 218 of the 1,080 flights on SFO to KOA, about 20% of it. Its 89.9% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 86.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 89.9% to United at 85.4%.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on SFO to KOA
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	218	89.9%	62 min	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	862	85.4%	50 min	0.35%	A+

Departure window

When Alaska 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 218 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's SFO to KOA record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.9% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on SFO to KOA through the year

Jul–Sep 202553 flights84.9%
Oct–Dec 202552 flights92.2%
Jan–Mar 202652 flights82.7%
Apr–Jun 202661 flights98.4%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 89.9% on time across 218 flights.

Alaska on SFO to KOA did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Apr–Jun 2026 at 98.4% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 82.7%, a swing of 16 points on roughly 55 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 97.7% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.6%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why Alaska runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 74% of the 1,364 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.

Carrier
74%
National Airspace System
26%

The largest share of delay minutes, 74%, 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 1,010 of the 1,364 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 1,364 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 3.7% 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 71.4% on time across 218 flights, 19 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 19 points of difference.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 218 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 Alaska on SFO to KOA

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 218 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 89.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 217 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures