Carrier route record
UALAX→CLE
United Airlines · Los Angeles to Cleveland
- Flights
- 640
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 84%
- Carriers
- 2
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LAX 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 15 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs roughly 45 minutes. That rests on 640 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to CLE record is 15 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 150 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
92.3%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 637 completed flights
Avg delay
44 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.31%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
91.1%
Every carrier on LAX to CLE, 759 flights
These figures cover 640 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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
United against every carrier on LAX to CLE
United flew 640 of the 759 flights on LAX to CLE, most of the route. Its 92.3% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 91.1%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of two carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 92.3% to American at 84.5%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlines (this page) | 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
When United 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 640 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am131 flights93.1%
- 11am–2pm221 flights92.8%
- 2pm–5pm8 flights—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am280 flights91.4%
Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8am–11am window is the strongest at 93.1% on time. The full set of windows spans 2 points.
Across the year
United on LAX to CLE through the year
July is the worst month at 85.0% on time, 13 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. December was the busiest month here, with 76 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Thursday the weakest at 89.7%, a spread of 5 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on LAX to CLE runs when it is late
United on LAX to CLE often beats the schedule: 287 of 637 completed flights, 45%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. Most of the lateness is short. 30 of the 49 late arrivals were under half an hour behind, and 7 reached an hour or more.
- 15+ min early287 flights45.1%
- Within 15 min301 flights47.3%
- 15–29 min late30 flights4.7%
- 30–59 min late12 flights1.9%
- 1–2 hours late1 flights0.2%
- 2+ hours late6 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 637 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 76 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 39 still arrived on time. Only 12 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on LAX to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 19 March 2026, 3 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. The same cause led on three of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 19 March 2026 | 3 hours 2 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 23 July 2026 | 3 hours 1 minute | Carrier |
| 8 December 2025 | 2 hours 52 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 28 August 2026 | 2 hours 49 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 5 November 2025 | 2 hours 20 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carrier accounts for 48% of the 2,142 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 48%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 13%National Airspace System
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,142 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 to one. The split is drawn from 2,142 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 48%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 1,021 of the 2,142 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.31%, 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
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 1.1% 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 88.1% on time across 640 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 640 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 LAX to CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 640 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 92.3% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 637 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to CLE, every carrier
- United on CLE to LAX, the return leg
- American Airlines on LAX to CLE84.5%
- United 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
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.