Carrier route record
DLTPA→LAX
Delta Air Lines · Tampa to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 660
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 57%
- Carriers
- 3
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with Delta Air Lines.
Delta on TPA to LAX 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 660 flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, Delta's TPA to LAX record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 650 completed flights
Avg delay
62 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.36%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.6%
Every carrier on TPA to LAX, 1,165 flights
These figures cover 660 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
Delta against every carrier on TPA to LAX
Delta flew 660 of the 1,165 flights on TPA to LAX, most of the route. Its 83.5% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 83.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.9% to Southwest at 72.3%. Two 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 Airlinesthin sample | 328 | 89.9% | 65 min | 0.30% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines (this page) | 660 | 83.5% | 62 min | 1.36% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 177 | 72.3% | 46 min | 0.00% | C+ |
Flight by flight
Delta flight numbers on TPA to LAX
Timetable by Aviasales, a Travelpayouts partner. Booking through it may earn this site a commission at no cost to you; it changes no figure here.
Departure window
When Delta runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 12 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am336 flights88.7%
- 8am–11am29 flights—
- 11am–2pm—
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm295 flights76.8%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 70% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 88.7% of the time, against 76.8% for the evening window. That is 12 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 336 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
Delta on TPA to LAX through the year
December is the weak month at 63.6% on time, against 90.7% 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. March was the busiest month here, with 58 flights.
Across the week, Thursday is the strongest day at 89.0% on time and Sunday the weakest at 77.1%, a spread of 12 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late Delta on TPA to LAX runs when it is late
Delta on TPA to LAX often beats the schedule: 212 of 650 completed flights, 33%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 107 late arrivals split 45 under half an hour, 32 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 30 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early212 flights32.6%
- Within 15 min331 flights50.9%
- 15–29 min late45 flights6.9%
- 30–59 min late32 flights4.9%
- 1–2 hours late17 flights2.6%
- 2+ hours late13 flights2.0%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 650 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 103 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 34 still arrived on time. In the other direction, 38 flights left on time yet arrived 15 minutes late or more, so that delay built up after pushback: in the air, in a holding pattern or on the ground at LAX.
The worst days
Worst days for Delta on TPA to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 8 April 2026, 9 hours 15 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The five worst days are spread across April, June, September, December and October, with no single month standing out.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 8 April 2026 | 9 hours 15 minutes | Carrier |
| 17 June 2026 | 7 hours 56 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 8 September 2025 | 4 hours 5 minutes | National Airspace System |
| 28 December 2025 | 3 hours 34 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 31 October 2025 | 3 hours 24 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why Delta 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 6,670 reported delay minutes.
- 40%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 22%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 6,670 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 to one. The split is drawn from 6,670 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 2,639 of the 6,670 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.36% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.15%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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 78.6% on time across 660 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.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 660 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 Delta on TPA to LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 660 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 83.5% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 650 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to LAX, every carrier
- Delta on LAX to TPA, the return leg
- United Airlines on TPA to LAX89.9%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to LAX72.3%
- Delta Air Lines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
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.