Route reliability record
SFO→LIH
San Francisco to Lihue
- Flights
- 922
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,446 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 922 SFO to LIH flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly SFO to LIH: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 93.4%, against 88.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 110 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 915 completed flights
Avg delay
49 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.54%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
87.7% on time across 689 flights
These figures cover 922 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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.
Fare search by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on SFO to LIH
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 | 233 | 90.0% | 47 min | 0.43% | A+ |
| United Airlines | 689 | 87.7% | 50 min | 0.58% | A+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on SFO to LIH
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.
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
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 922 flights.
- 5am–8am222 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am473 flights88.5%
- 11am–2pm4 flights—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm223 flights85.0%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 91.4% on time for the 5am–8am window against 85.0% for 5pm–8pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 473 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter SFO to LIH by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On SFO to LIH, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 91.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 85.0%, a real gap of 6.4 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am91.4%
- 8–11am88.5%
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm85.0%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 14 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 80.8% on time, against 95.0% in September. 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. July was the busiest month here, with 124 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 93.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 84.3%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 42% of the 5,282 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Late-arriving aircraft
- 39%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
42% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 5,282 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 42 to one. The split is drawn from 5,282 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 39%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,042 of the 5,282 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.54%, below the national 1.89% 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 2.7% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% 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 2,446 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 85.1% on time across 923 flights, 3 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 3 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 922 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 LIH after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 922 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 88.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 915 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
SFO to LIH questions
How often is SFO to LIH delayed?
About one flight in nine arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 11.7% of the 922 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is SFO to LIH compared with the rest of the country?
88.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 11 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 LIH?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 85.0%, 6 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 SFO to LIH?
December is the weakest month at 80.8% on time, compared with 95.0% in September. Across the year that is 14 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
- LIH to SFO — the return legseparate record
- San Francisco International (SFO) delay statistics
- Alaska Airlines on SFO to LIH90.0%
- United Airlines on SFO to LIH87.7%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- HNL to LIH, a related route83.7%
- SFO to SEA, a related route72.3%
- Alaska Airlines on-time record90.0%
- United Airlines on-time record87.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
Direction matters. SFO to LIH and LIH to SFO are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Embed SFO to LIH’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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.