Carrier route record
UALAX→TPA
United Airlines · Los Angeles to Tampa
- Flights
- 389
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on LAX to TPA 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 11 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 389 flights, with a median arrival 9 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's LAX to TPA record is 11 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 113 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
88.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 388 completed flights
Avg delay
55 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
79.7%
Every carrier on LAX to TPA, 1,191 flights
These figures cover 389 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 9 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 LAX to TPA
United flew 389 of the 1,191 flights on LAX to TPA, about 33% of it. Its 88.9% on time is 9 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.7%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 88.9% to Southwest at 59.9%. 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) | 389 | 88.9% | 55 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 659 | 78.6% | 57 min | 1.52% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 143 | 59.9% | 40 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 389 flights.
- 5am–8am—
- 8am–11am187 flights90.3%
- 11am–2pm56 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am146 flights88.4%
Scale runs 75% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The early departures do better, though not dramatically: 90.3% on time for the 8am–11am window against 85.7% for 11am–2pm. Worth taking if the schedule allows, not worth an extra connection. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 187 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
United on LAX to TPA through the year
April is the best month on the calendar at 97.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. November was the busiest month here, with 53 flights.
Across the week, Monday is the strongest day at 94.4% on time and Thursday the weakest at 78.3%. 16 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why United runs late on this route
Carriers report a reason for every delay minute they cause, in five DOT categories. The split below is by minutes, not by number of flights, so a handful of very long weather delays weighs as much as many short ones. It covers 2,366 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 19%National Airspace System
40% 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 2,366 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 40 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 2,366 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 971 of the 2,366 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.9% 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 2,158 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 runs 89.7% on time across 390 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. 389 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 TPA
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 389 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 88.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 388 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- LAX to TPA, every carrier
- United on TPA to LAX, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on LAX to TPA78.6%
- Southwest Airlines on LAX to TPA59.9%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Tampa International (TPA) 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.