Route reliability record
RSW→CLE
Fort Myers to Cleveland
- Flights
- 925
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 1,025 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 2 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 925 RSW to CLE flights, with a median arrival 10 minutes early.
Best time to fly RSW to CLE: a 11am–2pm departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 84.7% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.1%, against 79.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
79.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 911 completed flights
Avg delay
92 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.30%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Frontier
71.8% on time across 572 flights
These figures cover 925 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% 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 RSW 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| United Airlinesthin sample | 348 | 92.5% | 78 min | 0.57% | A+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 572 | 71.8% | 94 min | 1.75% | C |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 40.0% | 133 min | 0.00% | F+ |
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 21 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–8am60 flights75.9%
- 8am–11am63 flights81.0%
- 11am–2pm453 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm115 flights65.5%
- 5pm–8pm175 flights80.8%
- 8pm–5am59 flights63.8%
Scale runs 55% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 63.8% on time, against 84.7% for the 11am–2pm 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 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 453 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 30 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.
January is the weak month at 64.4% on time, against 94.1% in September. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. March was the busiest month here, with 170 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 72.8%. 14 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 57% of the 17,000 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.
- 57%Late-arriving aircraft
- 27%Carrier
- 14%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
57% 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 17,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 24 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 17,212 reported delay minutes.
Cancellations sit at 1.30% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 1,025 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 83.9% on time across 925 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 925 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. 925 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 79.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 911 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
RSW to CLE questions
How often is RSW to CLE delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 20.5% of the 925 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is RSW to CLE compared with the rest of the country?
79.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 2 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on RSW to CLE?
The 11am–2pm departure window is the strongest at 84.7% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 63.8%, 21 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 January delays on RSW to CLE?
January is the weakest month at 64.4% on time, compared with 94.1% in September. Across the year that is 30 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 RSW — the return legseparate record
- Southwest Florida International (RSW) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- United Airlines on RSW to CLE92.5%
- Frontier Airlines on RSW to CLE71.8%
- RSW to ORD, a related route76.5%
- ORD to CLE, a related route70.1%
- RSW to ATL, a related route85.7%
- United Airlines on-time record92.5%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record71.8%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record40.0%
- 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. RSW to CLE and CLE to RSW 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.