Carrier route record
UATPA→LAX
United Airlines · Tampa to Los Angeles
- Flights
- 328
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Share of route
- 28%
- 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 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 328 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, United's TPA to LAX record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
89.9%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 327 completed flights
Avg delay
65 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.30%
National rate is 1.89%
Whole route
83.6%
Every carrier on TPA to LAX, 1,165 flights
These figures cover 328 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 13 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 LAX
United flew 328 of the 1,165 flights on TPA to LAX, about 28% of it. Its 89.9% on time is 6 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 83.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of three carriers on the route, where the range runs from United at 89.9% to Southwest at 72.3%. 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 | 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+ |
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 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 328 flights.
- 5am–8am133 flights89.5%
- 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, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.1% on time and Friday the weakest at 86.5%, a spread of 9 points.
Arrival by arrival
How late United on TPA to LAX runs when it is late
United on TPA to LAX often beats the schedule: 149 of 327 completed flights, 46%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. The 33 late arrivals split 12 under half an hour, 11 between 30 and 60 minutes, and 10 an hour or more.
- 15+ min early149 flights45.6%
- Within 15 min145 flights44.3%
- 15–29 min late12 flights3.7%
- 30–59 min late11 flights3.4%
- 1–2 hours late7 flights2.1%
- 2+ hours late3 flights0.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 327 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 36 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 13 still arrived on time. 10 flights left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for United on TPA to LAX
The latest arrival of the period was on 4 December 2025, 7 hours 17 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as a late-arriving aircraft. On three of the five worst days the largest share was filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage).
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 4 December 2025 | 7 hours 17 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 2 May 2026 | 3 hours 29 minutes | Extreme weather |
| 26 September 2025 | 2 hours 11 minutes | Carrier |
| 23 February 2026 | 1 hour 39 minutes | Carrier |
| 10 April 2026 | 1 hour 39 minutes | Carrier |
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 2,147 reported delay minutes.
- 42%Carrier
- 34%Late-arriving aircraft
- 15%National Airspace System
- 10%Extreme weather
34% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 2,147 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 3 to one. The split is drawn from 2,147 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 894 of the 2,147 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.30%, 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 costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 3.1% 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 runs 88.7% on time across 327 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. 328 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. 328 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 89.9% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 327 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 LAX83.5%
- Southwest Airlines on TPA to LAX72.3%
- 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.