Route reliability record
MIA→CLE
Miami to Cleveland
- Flights
- 891
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 1,080 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route sits in the middle of the pack with a C. About seven flights in ten arrive on time by the DOT's definition, 6 points worse than the national rate of 77.3%. The late ones land about an hour behind schedule. That rests on 891 MIA to CLE flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
Best time to fly MIA to CLE: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 86.1% of the time and Tuesday flights 82.1%, against 71.8% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.3%, so this route runs 6 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 55 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
71.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 876 completed flights
Avg delay
63 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.01%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
69.9% on time across 456 flights
These figures cover 891 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally.
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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on MIA 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 165 | 76.5% | 43 min | 1.21% | B |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 75 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 266 | 72.1% | 78 min | 0.75% | C+ |
| American Airlines | 456 | 69.9% | 61 min | 1.10% | C |
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Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Miami to Cleveland
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 2 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. FLL → CLEFort Lauderdale to Cleveland | United Airlines | 88.2% | 89.0% | 0.91% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. MIA → CLEMiami to Cleveland | American Airlines | 69.1% | 69.9% | 1.10% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → CLEFort Lauderdale to Cleveland | Frontier Airlines | 68.3% | 70.6% | 3.31% | 11am–2pm, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
Departure window
The best time of day to leave
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am36 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm50 flights77.6%
- 2pm–5pm237 flights75.9%
- 5pm–8pm101 flights79.0%
- 8pm–5am439 flights64.6%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 64.6% on time, against 86.1% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 439 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter MIA 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 MIA to CLE, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 86.1% on time and the worst is 8pm–5am at 64.6%, a wide gap of 21.5 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am86.1%
- 8–11am—
- 11am–2pm77.6%
- 2–5pm75.9%
- 5–8pm79.0%
- 8pm–5am64.6%
best all US flightsScale 55% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 28 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 58.3% on time, 28 points below September, the best at 86.7%. 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. March was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 82.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 63.3%, a spread of 19 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 49% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 16%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
49% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 14 to one. The split is drawn from 15,666 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 86.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.01% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.67%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
10.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum for a connection here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,080 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.7% on time across 892 flights, 8 points above 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 8 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 891 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. 891 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 71.8% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 876 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
MIA to CLE questions
How often is MIA to CLE delayed?
Roughly one flight in four arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 28.2% of the 891 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is MIA to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
71.8% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points against it. That is worth a C on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on MIA to CLE?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 86.1% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 64.6%, 22 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 MIA to CLE?
July is the weakest month at 58.3% on time, compared with 86.7% in September. Across the year that is 28 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 MIA — the return legseparate record
- Miami International (MIA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on MIA to CLE76.5%
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to CLE72.1%
- American Airlines on MIA to CLE69.9%
- MIA to ATL, a related route74.2%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.8%
- MIA to LGA, a related route67.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record76.5%
- Republic Airways on-time record75.0%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record72.1%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. MIA to CLE and CLE to MIA 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.