Route reliability record
LAX→CLE
Los Angeles to Cleveland
- Flights
- 731
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 2,052 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route 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 about an hour. That rests on 731 LAX to CLE flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly LAX to CLE: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Sunday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.4% of the time and Sunday flights 97.2%, against 91.3% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 137 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 727 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.14%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
United
91.8% on time across 646 flights
These figures cover 731 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 LAX to CLE
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 | 646 | 91.8% | 53 min | 0.15% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 85 | 88.0% | 65 min | 0.00% | A+ |
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
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 731 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am172 flights91.8%
- 11am–2pm265 flights92.4%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am286 flights89.8%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The full set of windows spans 3 points.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 19 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.
July is the worst month at 78.7% on time, 19 points below September, the best at 98.0%. 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. June was the busiest month here, with 90 flights.
Across the week, Sunday is the strongest day at 97.2% on time and Tuesday the weakest at 86.7%. 11 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 53% of the 3,478 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.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 41%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
53% 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 3,478 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 53 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 3,478 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 1,422 of the 3,478 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.14%, below the national 1.81% 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.3% 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.
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 85.6% on time across 732 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 731 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 CLE after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 731 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 91.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 727 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
LAX to CLE questions
How often is LAX to CLE delayed?
About one flight in twelve arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 8.7% of the 731 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is LAX to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
91.3% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 14 points in its favour. That is worth a A+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on LAX to CLE?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 92.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 89.8%, 3 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 July delays on LAX to CLE?
July is the weakest month at 78.7% on time, compared with 98.0% in September. Across the year that is 19 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
- CLE to LAX — the return legseparate record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- LAX to SFO, a related route64.8%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- LAX to JFK, a related route79.1%
- United Airlines on-time record91.8%
- American Airlines on-time record88.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
Direction matters. LAX to CLE and CLE to LAX 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.