Carrier route record
UATPA→LAX
United Airlines · Tampa to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 390
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 33%
- 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 LAX earns an A+. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 12 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 390 flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's TPA to LAX record is 12 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 121 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 389 completed flights
Avg delay
70 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.26%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
83.5%
Every carrier on TPA to LAX, 1,192 flights
These figures cover 390 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 12 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 LAX
United flew 390 of the 1,192 flights on TPA to LAX, about 33% of it. Its 89.7% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.7% to Southwest at 68.5%. 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) | 390 | 89.7% | 70 min | 0.26% | A+ |
| Delta Air Lines | 659 | 83.1% | 64 min | 1.37% | B |
| Southwest Airlinesthin sample | 143 | 68.5% | 40 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 390 flights.
- 5am–8am195 flights89.2%
- 8am–11am56 flights89.3%
- 11am–2pm139 flights90.6%
- 2pm–5pm—
- 5pm–8pm—
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 80% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 90.6% on time. The full set of windows spans about a point.
Across the year
United on TPA to LAX through the year
January is the weak month at 79.5% on time, against 100.0% in March. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 53 flights.
Across the week, Saturday is the strongest day at 92.6% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.9%. 6 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
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 2,789 reported delay minutes.
- 39%Late-arriving aircraft
- 38%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
39% 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 2,789 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 5 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 2,789 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 1,070 of the 2,789 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.26%, below the national 1.81% 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.3% land an hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% 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 runs 88.9% on time across 389 flights, within about a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 390 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 LAX
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 390 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 89.7% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 389 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to LAX, every carrier
- United on LAX to TPA, the return leg
- Delta Air Lines on TPA to LAX83.1%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to LAX68.5%
- United Airlines network-wide record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Los Angeles International (LAX) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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.