Route reliability record
CLE→TPA
Cleveland to Tampa
- Flights
- 1,046
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 927 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by a little over an hour on average. That rests on 1,046 CLE to TPA flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to TPA: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 87.0%, against 79.9% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.3%, 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
79.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,028 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.43%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Frontier
77.9% on time across 910 flights
These figures cover 1,046 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 9.0% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on CLE 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 131 | 93.1% | 62 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 80.0% | 38 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 910 | 77.9% | 78 min | 1.65% | B |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to TPA
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 17 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am254 flights85.8%
- 8am–11am217 flights86.4%
- 11am–2pm68 flights79.1%
- 2pm–5pm219 flights79.4%
- 5pm–8pm246 flights69.8%
- 8pm–5am42 flights73.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 86.4% of the time, against 69.8% for the evening window. That is 17 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 254 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter CLE to TPA 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 TPA, the best departure window is 8am–11am at 86.4% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 69.8%, a wide gap of 16.6 points. All US flights leaving 8am–11am ran 83.9%.
- 5–8am85.8%
- 8–11am86.4%
- 11am–2pm79.1%
- 2–5pm79.4%
- 5–8pm69.8%
- 8pm–5am73.2%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 27 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 68.4% on time, against 94.9% in September. 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 138 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.0% on time and Saturday the weakest at 74.3%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 54% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 54%Late-arriving aircraft
- 25%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
54% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 22 to one. The split is drawn from 15,927 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.4% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.43% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.29%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
9.0% 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.
The 927 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.
The return leg runs 78.0% on time across 1,048 flights, within 2 points 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. 1,046 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. 1,046 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 79.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 1,028 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to TPA questions
How often is CLE 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 20.1% of the 1,046 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CLE to TPA compared with the rest of the country?
79.9% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 3 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 TPA?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 86.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 69.8%, 17 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 TPA?
January is the weakest month at 68.4% on time, compared with 94.9% in September. Across the year that is 27 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- United Airlines on CLE to TPA93.1%
- Frontier Airlines on CLE to TPA77.9%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.5%
- ATL to TPA, a related route73.0%
- CLE to ATL, a related route84.6%
- United Airlines on-time record93.1%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record80.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record77.9%
- 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 TPA and TPA 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.