Route reliability record
CLE→RSW
Cleveland to Fort Myers
- Flights
- 925
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,025 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 925 CLE to RSW flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to RSW: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.0% of the time and Wednesday flights 88.3%, against 83.9% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 912 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.97%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Frontier
78.0% on time across 572 flights
These figures cover 925 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 CLE to RSW
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 Airlinesthin sample | 348 | 93.6% | 60 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 31 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 572 | 78.0% | 82 min | 1.22% | B |
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 26 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–8am232 flights89.0%
- 8am–11am316 flights86.9%
- 11am–2pm91 flights76.7%
- 2pm–5pm188 flights81.7%
- 5pm–8pm32 flights63.3%
- 8pm–5am66 flights76.9%
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.3% on time, against 89.0% for the 5am–8am 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 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 316 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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.
January is the weak month at 66.2% on time, against 94.4% in May. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 170 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.3% on time and Monday the weakest at 79.2%. 9 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 43% 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.
- 43%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 24%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
43% 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 22 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 11,443 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am 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 sit at 0.97% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.43%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.9% 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 a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,025 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 is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.5% on time across 925 flights, 4 points below 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. 925 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 RSW after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 925 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 83.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 912 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to RSW questions
How often is CLE to RSW 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 16.1% of the 925 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLE to RSW compared with the rest of the country?
83.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 RSW?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.0% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.3%, 26 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 January delays on CLE to RSW?
January is the weakest month at 66.2% on time, compared with 94.4% in May. Across the year that is 28 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
- RSW to CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CLE to RSW93.6%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to RSW78.0%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- ORD to RSW, a related route76.1%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- United Airlines on-time record93.6%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record78.0%
- 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. CLE to RSW and RSW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.