Carrier route record
AALAX→CLE
American Airlines · Los Angeles to Cleveland
- Flights
- 119
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 16%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on LAX to CLE earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 119 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's LAX to CLE record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 72 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 116 completed flights
Avg delay
77 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.84%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
91.1%
Every carrier on LAX to CLE, 759 flights
These figures cover 119 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
American against every carrier on LAX to CLE
American flew 119 of the 759 flights on LAX to CLE, about 16% of it. Its 84.5% on time is 7 points worse than the route as a whole, which runs 91.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is last of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 92.3% to American at 84.5%.
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 Airlines (this page)thin sample | 119 | 84.5% | 77 min | 0.84% | B+ |
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Departure window
When American runs best on this route
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 119 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split American's LAX to CLE record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.5% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
American on LAX to CLE through the year
- Apr–Jun 202685 flights88.0%
- Jul–Sep 202634 flights75.8%
Scale runs 65% to 95%.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.5% on time across 119 flights.
Split by quarter, American on LAX to CLE logged 85 flights in Apr–Jun 2026 and 34 flights in Jul–Sep 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.5% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late American on LAX to CLE runs when it is late
American on LAX to CLE often beats the schedule: 54 of 116 completed flights, 47%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 9 of the 18 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early54 flights46.6%
- Within 15 min44 flights37.9%
- 15–29 min late9 flights7.8%
- 30–59 min late2 flights1.7%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights3.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 116 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
5 of 23 late departures made up the time and arrived on time, 22% of them. No flight that left on time arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for American on LAX to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 2 July 2026, 7 hours 13 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. Three of the five worst days fell in June 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 2 July 2026 | 7 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 7 July 2026 | 2 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 13 June 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 29 June 2026 | 2 hours | Carrier |
| 12 June 2026 | 1 hour 50 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
Delay causes
Why American runs late on this route
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 77% of the 1,387 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 77%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 1%National Airspace System
77% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,387 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 77 to one. The split is drawn from 1,387 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 84.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.84%, 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 costs
6.0% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so 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.
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 60.2% on time across 119 flights, 24 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 24 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 119 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 American on LAX to CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 119 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 84.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 116 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to CLE, every carrier
- American on CLE to LAX, the return leg
- United Airlines on LAX to CLE92.3%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.