Route reliability record
TPA→LAX
Tampa to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 1,165
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 2,158 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That rests on 1,165 TPA to LAX flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly TPA to LAX: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Thursday. Flights in that window arrived on time 88.9% of the time and Thursday flights 87.6%, against 83.6% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 63 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.6%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,154 completed flights
Avg delay
59 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.86%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
Delta
83.5% on time across 660 flights
These figures cover 1,165 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 8 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
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to LAX
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 | 328 | 89.9% | 65 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 660 | 83.5% | 62 min | 1.36% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 177 | 72.3% | 46 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on TPA to LAX
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
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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 13 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am469 flights88.9%
- 8am–11am146 flights82.2%
- 11am–2pm223 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm20 flights—
- 5pm–8pm307 flights75.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.9% of the time, against 75.7% for the evening window. That is 13 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 469 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter TPA to LAX 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 TPA to LAX, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 88.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 75.7%, a wide gap of 13.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am88.9%
- 8–11am82.2%
- 11am–2pm86.0%
- 2–5pm—
- 5–8pm75.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 17 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.
December is the weak month at 75.2% on time, against 91.7% 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. April was the busiest month here, with 120 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 87.6% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.2%, a spread of 9 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
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 11,000 reported delay minutes.
- 41%Carrier
- 35%Late-arriving aircraft
- 20%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
35% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 11,076 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 4,532 of the 11,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.86%, below the national 1.89% and low enough to earn the plus on the grade. Roughly one flight in 100 is called off; the risk here is arriving late, not not arriving.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.3% nationally. Connections built on this flight are about as safe as US domestic connections get, though a cancelled flight still ignores every layover you give it.
At 2,158 miles this is transcontinental flying, and long routes get a quiet structural advantage. Scheduled block time on a flight this length carries more padding in absolute minutes, so a twenty-minute late departure often still becomes an on-time arrival. Read the on-time rate here as slightly flattering next to a short-haul route with the same operational quality.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 78.8% on time across 1,164 flights, 5 points below 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 5 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,165 flights, enough that the headline rate is stable to within roughly a point. The hour-block and month splits divide that further, so read the thinner bars with more caution than the headline.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in LAX after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 91.7% on time and December 75.2%, a swing of 17 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 1,154 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to LAX questions
How often is TPA to LAX delayed?
About one flight in six arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.4% of the 1,165 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is TPA to LAX compared with the rest of the country?
83.6% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 6 points in its favour. That is worth a B+ on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on TPA to LAX?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 88.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 75.7%, 13 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 December delays on TPA to LAX?
December is the weakest month at 75.2% on time, compared with 91.7% in September. Across the year that is 17 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
- LAX to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- United Airlines on TPA to LAX89.9%
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to LAX83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to LAX72.3%
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.6%
- SFO to LAX, a related route70.9%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.9%
- United Airlines on-time record89.9%
- Delta Air Lines on-time record83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record72.3%
- 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. TPA to LAX and LAX to TPA 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.