Carrier route record
UACLE→LAX
United Airlines · Cleveland to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 640
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on CLE to LAX 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 640 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's CLE to LAX record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 108 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 637 completed flights
Avg delay
47 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.7%
Every carrier on CLE to LAX, 759 flights
These figures cover 640 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 CLE to LAX
United flew 640 of the 759 flights on CLE to LAX, most of the route. Its 88.1% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.1% to American at 60.2%. 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 640 | 88.1% | 47 min | 0.31% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 60.2% | 56 min | 0.84% | D+ |
Flight by flight
United flight numbers on CLE to LAX
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 640 flights.
- 5am–8am307 flights86.9%
- 8am–11am—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm314 flights90.4%
- 5pm–8pm19 flights—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 2pm–5pm window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 4 points.
Across the year
United on CLE to LAX through the year
June is the worst month at 75.0% on time, 25 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. December was the busiest month here, with 76 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 92.9% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 80.0%, a spread of 13 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on CLE to LAX runs when it is late
United on CLE to LAX often beats the schedule: 225 of 637 completed flights, 35%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 76 late arrivals split 35 under half an hour, 27 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 14 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early225 flights35.3%
- Within 15 min336 flights52.7%
- 15–29 min late35 flights5.5%
- 30–59 min late27 flights4.2%
- 1–2 hours late8 flights1.3%
- 2+ hours late6 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 637 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 69 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 23 still arrived on time. 30 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on CLE to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 December 2025, 4 hours 12 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 December 2025 | 4 hours 12 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 February 2026 | 3 hours 27 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 25 June 2026 | 2 hours 50 minutes | Carrier |
| 14 March 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 August 2026 | 2 hours 41 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
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 3,576 reported delay minutes.
- 33%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%National Airspace System
- 30%Carrier
- 7%Extreme weather
No single cause dominates. late-arriving aircraft at 33%, national airspace system at 31% and carrier at 30% split the 3,576 reported delay minutes between them. An even spread like this usually means the operation is running close to its designed capacity with no one obvious weak point, and it is the hardest pattern for a traveller to route around. The split is drawn from 3,576 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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 2.2% 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 92.3% on time across 640 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 640 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 CLE to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 640 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 88.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 637 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- CLE to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to CLE, the return leg
- American Airlines on CLE to LAX60.2%
- United 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.