Carrier route record

UAFLL→CLE

United Airlines · Fort Lauderdale to Cleveland

Flights: 506
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 43%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.

United on FLL to CLE 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 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs an hour and a half. That rests on 506 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, United's FLL to CLE record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 138 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 499 completed flights

Avg delay

99 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

0.99%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

78.8%

Every carrier on FLL to CLE, 1,164 flights

These figures cover 506 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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

United against every carrier on FLL to CLE

United flew 506 of the 1,164 flights on FLL to CLE, about 43% of it. Its 91.4% on time is 13 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.8%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 91.4% to Spirit at 67.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on FLL to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)	506	91.4%	99 min	0.99%	A+
Frontier Airlines	425	70.2%	95 min	2.12%	C
Spirit Airlinesthin sample	233	67.0%	64 min	3.86%	C−

Departure window

When United runs best on this route

Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 10 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–8am—
8am–11am178 flights96.0%
11am–2pm115 flights94.7%
2pm–5pm193 flights85.9%
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am20 flights—

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 96.0% of the time, against 85.9% for the afternoon window. That is 10 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 2pm–5pm window is the busiest, with 193 flights scheduled in it.

Across the year

United on FLL to CLE through the year

Jul–Sep 202578 flights98.7%
Oct–Dec 202584 flights95.2%
Jan–Mar 2026157 flights85.6%
Apr–Jun 2026187 flights91.4%

Scale runs 75% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.4% on time across 506 flights.

United on FLL to CLE did not run the same all year. Its best quarter was Jul–Sep 2025 at 98.7% on time and its weakest Jan–Mar 2026 at 85.6%, a swing of 13 points on roughly 127 flights a quarter. The twelve-month rate averages over that, so if you are flying in a weak quarter the quarter's own figure is the better guide.

Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 97.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 83.3%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why United runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 56% of the 4,245 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
56%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
17%
Extreme weather
1%

56% 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 4,245 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 56 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 4,245 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 96.0% on time here.

Cancellations sit at 0.99% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.40%.

Connections and stage length

What a delay here costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.8% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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.

The 1,062 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 runs 90.4% on time across 506 flights, within about a point 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. 506 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 FLL to CLE

Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 506 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 91.4% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 499 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures