Route reliability record
TPA→STL
Tampa to St. Louis
- Flights
- 1,223
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 869 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B+, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by about an hour on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 1,223 TPA to STL flights, with a median arrival 8 minutes early.
Best time to fly TPA to STL: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 95.5% of the time and Tuesday flights 88.5%, against 83.7% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 61 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,216 completed flights
Avg delay
56 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
0.57%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Southwest
83.7% on time across 1,194 flights
These figures cover 1,223 flights between July 2025 and June 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on TPA to STL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 29 | 85.7% | 76 min | 3.45% | A− |
| Southwest Airlines | 1,194 | 83.7% | 55 min | 0.50% | B+ |
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 34 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am291 flights95.5%
- 8am–11am136 flights91.9%
- 11am–2pm355 flights86.1%
- 2pm–5pm77 flights85.3%
- 5pm–8pm211 flights73.5%
- 8pm–5am153 flights61.6%
Scale runs 55% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 8pm–5am window is where this operation falls apart: 61.6% on time, against 95.5% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 11am–2pm window is the busiest, with 355 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
Twelve months, one bar each, drawn from the same 1,223 flights. The strip shows how much of this route's record is set by the calendar rather than by the operation.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.1% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. March was the busiest month here, with 125 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Monday the weakest at 75.1%. 13 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 59% of the 11,000 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 59%Late-arriving aircraft
- 21%Carrier
- 15%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
59% 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 11,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 11,011 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 95.5% on time here.
Cancellations are rare at 0.57%, 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 actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.8% 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.
The 869 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 79.6% on time across 1,225 flights, 4 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 4 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,223 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 STL after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: avoid the 8pm–5am departure. It runs 61.6% on time against 95.5% for the 5am–8am slot, and that 34 points is the largest single thing you control here. Southwest Airlines is the strongest operator if the fares are close. 1,216 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
TPA to STL questions
How often is TPA to STL 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 16.3% of the 1,223 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by about an hour on average.
How reliable is TPA to STL compared with the rest of the country?
83.7% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, 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 STL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 95.5% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 61.6%, 34 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 March delays on TPA to STL?
March is the weakest month at 79.3% on time, compared with 91.1% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- STL to TPA — the return legseparate record
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- St. Louis Lambert International (STL) delay statistics
- TPA to ATL, a related route79.9%
- ATL to STL, a related route82.4%
- TPA to ORD, a related route72.8%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record85.7%
- Southwest Airlines on-time record83.7%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. TPA to STL and STL 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, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.