Route reliability record
MIA→CLE
Miami to Cleveland
- Flights
- 840
- Period
- July 2025 to June 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, 5 points worse than the national rate of 77.6%. The late ones land a little over an hour behind schedule. That rests on 840 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 81.1%, against 72.2% for the route overall.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so this route runs 5 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 54 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
72.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 825 completed flights
Avg delay
69 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.19%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
70.5% on time across 456 flights
These figures cover 840 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
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 | 111 | 77.8% | 43 min | 1.80% | B |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 264 | 73.5% | 83 min | 1.14% | C |
| American Airlines | 456 | 70.5% | 65 min | 1.10% | C |
| Republic Airwaysthin sample | 9 | 55.6% | 95 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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 | 90.5% | 91.4% | 0.99% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
| 2. MIA → CLEMiami to Cleveland | American Airlines | 69.7% | 70.5% | 1.10% | 5pm–8pm, Tue | — |
| 3. FLL → CLEFort Lauderdale to Cleveland | Frontier Airlines | 68.7% | 70.2% | 2.12% | 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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am36 flights86.1%
- 8am–11am28 flights—
- 11am–2pm70 flights75.0%
- 2pm–5pm197 flights74.9%
- 5pm–8pm113 flights76.8%
- 8pm–5am396 flights66.2%
Scale runs 60% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 86.1% of the time, against 66.2% for the overnight window. That is 20 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8pm–5am window is the busiest, with 396 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 25 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 86.7% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 94 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 81.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 62.0%. 19 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 53% of the 16,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 53%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
53% 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 16,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 23 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 15,699 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 1.19% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.60%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 10.5% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum 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. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 79.5% on time across 842 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 840 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. 840 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 72.2% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 825 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 27.8% of the 840 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is MIA to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
72.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 5 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 66.2%, 20 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 April delays on MIA to CLE?
April is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 86.7% in September. Across the year that is 25 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 CLE77.8%
- Frontier Airlines on MIA to CLE73.5%
- American Airlines on MIA to CLE70.5%
- MIA to ATL, a related route73.7%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- MIA to LGA, a related route68.0%
- Envoy Air on-time record77.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record73.5%
- American Airlines on-time record70.5%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 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.
Embed MIA to CLE’s on-time badge on your site
Paste this into a web page. The badge shows the current on-time rate, cancellation rate and grade, and updates every month. Preview it, or build a badge for another route or airport.
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.