Route reliability record
LAX→CLE
Los Angeles to Cleveland
- Flights
- 759
- Period
- September 2025 to August 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 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 55 minutes. That rests on 759 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 Monday. Flights in that window arrived on time 92.8% of the time and Monday flights 94.1%, against 91.1% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 138 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
91.1%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 753 completed flights
Avg delay
53 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.40%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
United
92.3% on time across 640 flights
These figures cover 759 flights between September 2025 and August 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.
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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 | 640 | 92.3% | 44 min | 0.31% | A+ |
| American Airlinesthin sample | 119 | 84.5% | 77 min | 0.84% | B+ |
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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 759 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am250 flights89.0%
- 11am–2pm221 flights92.8%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am280 flights91.4%
Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The overnight block holds up unusually well at 91.4% on time across 280 flights. Red-eyes fly into empty airspace and empty gates, and they are the first rotation of the aircraft's day rather than the last. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 280 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter LAX to CLE 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 LAX to CLE, the best departure window is 11am–2pm at 92.8% on time and the worst is 8am–11am at 89.0%, a narrow gap of 3.8 points. All US flights leaving 11am–2pm ran 78.3%.
- 5–8am—
- 8–11am89.0%
- 11am–2pm92.8%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm—
- 8pm–5am91.4%
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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 82.0% on time, 16 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, Monday is the strongest day at 94.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 88.6%, a spread of 6 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 55% of the 3,529 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 37%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
55% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 3,529 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 to one. The split is drawn from 3,529 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 37%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,317 of the 3,529 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.40%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.9% 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 83.7% on time across 759 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 759 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. 759 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 91.1% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 753 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 8.9% of the 759 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by roughly 55 minutes on average.
How reliable is LAX to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
91.1% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, 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 92.8% on time. The 8am–11am window is the weakest at 89.0%, 4 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 82.0% on time, compared with 98.0% in September. Across the year that is 16 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
- United Airlines on LAX to CLE92.3%
- American Airlines on LAX to CLE84.5%
- LAX to SFO, a related route60.1%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.8%
- LAX to JFK, a related route77.5%
- United Airlines on-time record92.3%
- American Airlines on-time record84.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The most punctual routes in the US, and the least
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.