Carrier route record

ASSFO→LIH

Alaska Airlines · San Francisco to Lihue

Flights: 197
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 23%
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 LIH 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 roughly 30 minutes. That rests on 197 flights, with a median arrival 14 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, Alaska's SFO to LIH record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 122 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

89.8%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 196 completed flights

Avg delay

31 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.00%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

89.6%

Every carrier on SFO to LIH, 852 flights

These figures cover 197 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 14 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 LIH

Alaska flew 197 of the 852 flights on SFO to LIH, about 23% of it. Its 89.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 89.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 89.8% to United at 89.6%.

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 LIH
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
Alaska Airlines (this page)thin sample	197	89.8%	31 min	0.00%	A+
United Airlines	655	89.6%	50 min	0.00%	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 197 flights.

There are not enough flights in each departure window to split Alaska's SFO to LIH record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 89.8% is the reliable figure here.

Across the year

Alaska on SFO to LIH through the year

Jul–Sep 202539 flights100.0%
Oct–Dec 202546 flights93.3%
Jan–Mar 202651 flights78.4%
Apr–Jun 202661 flights90.2%

Scale runs 70% 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 89.8% on time across 197 flights.

Alaska on SFO to LIH did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 100.0% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 78.4%, a swing of 22 points on roughly 49 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 100.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 78.1%. 22 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. National Airspace System accounts for 53% of the 626 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.

National Airspace System
53%
Carrier
36%
Late-arriving aircraft
11%

53% of delay minutes are charged to the National Airspace System: air traffic volume, runway configuration, ground stops. No carrier can price its way out of that, which is why airport choice moves the number here more than carrier choice does. That is 330 minutes out of 626, against a national NAS share of 21%. The split is drawn from 626 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 227 of the 626 delay minutes reported here.

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 0.5% 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 2,446 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 71.3% on time across 198 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. 197 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 LIH

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 197 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 89.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 196 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