Carrier route record

UATPA→CLE

United Airlines · Tampa to Cleveland

Flights: 131
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 13%
Carriers: 3

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. 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 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 64 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

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 1.81%

Whole route

79.0%

Every carrier on TPA to CLE, 1,005 flights

These figures cover 131 flights between July 2025 and June 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.

Carrier by carrier

United against every carrier on TPA to CLE

United flew 131 of the 1,005 flights on TPA to CLE, about 13% of it. Its 84.0% on time is 5 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 79.0%. 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.

On-time performance by carrier on TPA to CLE
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
United Airlines (this page)thin sample	131	84.0%	80 min	0.00%	B+
Frontier Airlines	859	78.6%	78 min	1.16%	B
Southwest Airlinesthin sample	15	60.0%	38 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 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.

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.

Carrier
38%
Late-arriving aircraft
38%
National Airspace System
20%
Extreme weather
5%

38% 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 1,673 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 1,673 reported delay minutes.

The largest share of delay minutes, 38%, 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 632 of the 1,673 delay minutes reported here.

Cancellations are rare at 0.00%, below the national 1.81% 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 8.1%. 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 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. 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 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.

Where to go next

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.

Key figures