Carrier route record
AACLE→LAX
American Airlines · Cleveland to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 119
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on CLE to LAX draws a D+. Roughly one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is about an hour behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 119 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes late.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so American on CLE to LAX runs 17 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 171 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
60.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 118 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.7%
Every carrier on CLE to LAX, 759 flights
These figures cover 119 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
American against every carrier on CLE to LAX
American flew 119 of the 759 flights on CLE to LAX, about 16% of it. Its 60.2% on time is 24 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.1% to American at 60.2%.
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 119 | 60.2% | 56 min | 0.84% | D+ |
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 American 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 119 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's CLE to LAX record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 60.2% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
American on CLE to LAX through the year
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights60.0%
- Jul–Sep 202634 flights60.6%
Scale runs 50% to 65%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 60.2% on time across 119 flights.
Split by quarter, American on CLE to LAX logged 85 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 34 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 60.2% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on CLE to LAX runs when it is late
The 47 late arrivals split 22 under half an hour, 14 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 11 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early9 flights7.6%
- Within 15 min62 flights52.5%
- 15–29 min late22 flights18.6%
- 30–59 min late14 flights11.9%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights5.9%
- 2+ hours late4 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 118 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Time lost at the gate mostly stays lost. Of 21 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, only 1 made it up before arrival. In the other direction, 27 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for American on CLE to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 18 April 2026, 5 hours 47 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 18 April 2026 | 5 hours 47 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 July 2026 | 4 hours 43 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 April 2026 | 4 hours 36 minutes | Carrier |
| 7 July 2026 | 2 hours 18 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 19 May 2026 | 1 hour 54 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 47% of the 2,624 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 47%Late-arriving aircraft
- 34%National Airspace System
- 19%Carrier
47% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,624 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 47 to one. The split is drawn from 2,624 reported delay minutes.
34% 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 898 minutes out of 2,624, against a national NAS share of 21%.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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
9.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
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 84.5% on time across 119 flights, 24 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 24 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 119 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 American on CLE to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 119 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 60.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 118 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to LAX, every carrier
- American on LAX to CLE, the return leg
- United Airlines on CLE to LAX88.1%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How often a connection fails at the major US hubs
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.