Route reliability record
CLE→LAX
Cleveland to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,052 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about 50 minutes on average. That rests on 759 CLE to LAX flights, with a median arrival 7 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to LAX: a 2pm–5pm departure, ideally on a Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.4% of the time and Monday flights 88.1%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 755 completed flights
Avg delay
50 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
88.1% on time across 640 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 7 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
Which airline is most reliable on CLE to LAX
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines | 640 | 88.1% | 47 min | 0.31% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 60.2% | 56 min | 0.84% | D+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to LAX
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.
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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 29 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am307 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm314 flights90.4%
- 5pm–8pm132 flights61.1%
- 8pm–5am6 flights—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 61.1% on time, against 90.4% for the 2pm–5pm slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 314 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE to LAX 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 CLE to LAX, the best departure window is 2pm–5pm at 90.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 61.1%, a wide gap of 29.3 points. All US flights leaving 2pm–5pm ran 71.9%.
- 5–8am86.9%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2–5pm90.4%
- 5–8pm61.1%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 33 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.
June is the worst month at 66.7% on time, 33 points below October, the best at 100.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 88.1% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 75.3%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 6,200 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 32%National Airspace System
- 25%Carrier
- 4%Extreme weather
39% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,200 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 9 to one. The split is drawn from 6,200 reported delay minutes.
32% 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 1,989 minutes out of 6,200, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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 3.3% 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 2,052 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 91.1% on time across 759 flights, 7 points above 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 759 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 LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 759 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 83.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 755 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to LAX questions
How often is CLE to LAX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.3% of the 759 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about 50 minutes on average.
How reliable is CLE to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
83.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to LAX?
The 2pm–5pm departure window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 61.1%, 29 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 June delays on CLE to LAX?
June is the weakest month at 66.7% on time, compared with 100.0% in October. Across the year that is 33 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
- LAX to CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CLE to LAX88.1%
- American Airlines on CLE to LAX60.2%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- United Airlines on-time record88.1%
- American Airlines on-time record60.2%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. CLE to LAX and LAX to CLE 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.