Carrier route record
UASFO→LIH
United Airlines · San Francisco to Lihue
- Flights
- 689
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 75%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United 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 10 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 50 minutes. That rests on 689 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's SFO to LIH record is 10 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 104 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
87.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 684 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.58%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
88.3%
Every carrier on SFO to LIH, 922 flights
These figures cover 689 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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Carrier by carrier
United against every carrier on SFO to LIH
United flew 689 of the 922 flights on SFO to LIH, most of the route. Its 87.7% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 88.3%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from Alaska at 90.0% to United at 87.7%. One of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.
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 (this page) | 689 | 87.7% | 50 min | 0.58% | A+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on SFO to LIH
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
When United 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 689 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am466 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm—
- 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: 89.0% on time for the 8am–11am 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 466 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on SFO to LIH through the year
December is the weak month at 80.3% on time, against 98.3% in March. 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 93 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 82.3%, a spread of 8 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on SFO to LIH runs when it is late
United on SFO to LIH often beats the schedule: 286 of 684 completed flights, 42%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 84 late arrivals split 36 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 21 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early286 flights41.8%
- Within 15 min314 flights45.9%
- 15–29 min late36 flights5.3%
- 30–59 min late27 flights3.9%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights2.5%
- 2+ hours late4 flights0.6%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 684 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
25 of 87 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 29% of them. 22 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on SFO to LIH
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 July 2026, 4 hours 19 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on five of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 July 2026 | 4 hours 19 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 6 November 2025 | 4 hours 8 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 July 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 9 May 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 25 June 2026 | 1 hour 58 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 4,191 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 52%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
52% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 4,191 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 52 to one. The split is drawn from 4,191 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 89.0% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.58%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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 runs 89.8% on time across 689 flights, within 2 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. 689 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 United on SFO to LIH
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 689 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 87.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 684 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.