Route reliability record
BUF→TPA
Buffalo to Tampa
- Flights
- 757
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,053 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, about a point better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 757 BUF to TPA flights, with a median arrival 5 minutes early.
Best time to fly BUF to TPA: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Friday. Flights in that window arrived on time 94.0% of the time and Friday flights 89.8%, against 78.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
78.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 750 completed flights
Avg delay
66 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.53%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
79.4% on time across 630 flights
These figures cover 757 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 5 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 BUF to TPA
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Southwest Airlines | 630 | 79.4% | 63 min | 0.32% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 127 | 74.2% | 76 min | 1.57% | C |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 30 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am248 flights92.3%
- 8am–11am66 flights84.6%
- 11am–2pm52 flights94.0%
- 2pm–5pm88 flights64.4%
- 5pm–8pm246 flights66.3%
- 8pm–5am57 flights71.9%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The best window here is not the first bank but the 11am–2pm slot at 94.0% on time, ahead of 2pm–5pm at 64.4%. Where the curve peaks mid-day rather than at dawn, the constraint is usually congestion at one end rather than the aircraft's own rotation. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 248 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 36 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.
July is the worst month at 58.2% on time, 36 points below September, the best at 93.8%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 76 flights.
Across the week, Friday is the strongest day at 89.8% on time and Sunday the weakest at 71.3%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 66% of the 11,000 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.
- 66%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
66% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 66 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 10,539 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.53%, 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
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last about an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,053 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg runs 79.8% on time across 756 flights, within about a point 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. 757 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 TPA after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 757 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 78.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 750 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BUF to TPA questions
How often is BUF to TPA delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 21.5% of the 757 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is BUF to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
78.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of about a point in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BUF to TPA?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 94.0% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 64.4%, 30 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 July delays on BUF to TPA?
July is the weakest month at 58.2% on time, compared with 93.8% in September. Across the year that is 36 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
- TPA to BUF — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Southwest Airlines on BUF to TPA79.4%
- Frontier Airlines on BUF to TPA74.2%
- BUF to ORD, a related route74.0%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.3%
- BUF to LGA, a related route78.2%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record79.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record74.2%
- 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. BUF to TPA and TPA to BUF 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.