Carrier route record
UATPA→CLE
United Airlines · Tampa to Cleveland
- Flights
- 131
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 13%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with United Airlines.
United on TPA to CLE earns a B+. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 131 flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's TPA to CLE record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 67 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 131 completed flights
Avg delay
80 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.00%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
78.0%
Every carrier on TPA to CLE, 1,048 flights
These figures cover 131 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 TPA to CLE
United flew 131 of the 1,048 flights on TPA to CLE, about 13% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 78.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 84.0% to Southwest at 60.0%. 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)thin sample | 131 | 84.0% | 80 min | 0.00% | B+ |
| Frontier Airlines | 912 | 77.3% | 82 min | 1.43% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 5 | 60.0% | 52 min | 0.00% | D+ |
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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 131 flights.
There are not enough flights in each departure window to split United's TPA to CLE record by time of day without the percentages moving on noise. The headline rate of 84.0% is the reliable figure here.
Across the year
United on TPA to CLE through the year
- Oct–Dec 202512 flights—
- Jan–Mar 202672 flights76.4%
- Apr–Jun 202647 flights93.6%
Scale runs 70% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 84.0% on time across 131 flights.
Split by quarter, United on TPA to CLE logged 12 flights in Oct–Dec 2025, 72 flights in Jan–Mar 2026 and 47 flights in Apr–Jun 2026. Fewer than three of those quarters carried the 30 completed flights this site needs before printing a rate, so the 84.0% annual figure is the one to use.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on TPA to CLE runs when it is late
United on TPA to CLE often beats the schedule: 50 of 131 completed flights, 38%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 21 late arrivals split 4 under half an hour, 7 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early50 flights38.2%
- Within 15 min60 flights45.8%
- 15–29 min late4 flights3.1%
- 30–59 min late7 flights5.3%
- 1–2 hours late6 flights4.6%
- 2+ hours late4 flights3.1%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 131 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
Only 17 of 131 completed flights left 15 minutes late or more, too few to say how often the time is made up.
The worst days
Worst days for United on TPA to CLE
The latest arrival of the period was on 12 March 2026, 6 hours 2 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). Three of the five worst days fell in March 2026.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 12 March 2026 | 6 hours 2 minutes | Carrier |
| 16 March 2026 | 4 hours 13 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 15 March 2026 | 2 hours 6 minutes | Carrier |
| 21 February 2026 | 2 hours 4 minutes | Carrier |
| 20 May 2026 | 1 hour 42 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
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 1,673 reported delay minutes.
- 38%Carrier
- 38%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
38% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 1,673 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 1,673 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 632 of the 1,673 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Almost no flights are called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.6% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last a little over an hour, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 927 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 93.1% on time across 131 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 131 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 TPA to CLE
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 131 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 84.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 131 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CLE, every carrier
- United on CLE to TPA, the return leg
- Frontier Airlines on TPA to CLE77.3%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- How to read this site: grades, sample sizes, and honest caveats
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.