Flight number record

AA 1897

American Airlines · Charlotte to Raleigh

Route: CLT → RDU
Departs: 12:10
Flights: 265
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 1897, check with American Airlines.

AA 1897 lands a B, 5 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 265 flights, with a median arrival 6 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 1897's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 50 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

82.6%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 259 completed flights

Avg delay

58 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.26%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

4.6%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 265 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 6 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.

Schedule

When AA 1897 flies

AA 1897 flies CLT to RDU without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 12:10, used on 54 of 265 flights, with 13:07 (36 flights) and 13:04 (31 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 12:1054 flights20.4%
Departs 13:0736 flights13.6%
Departs 13:0431 flights11.7%

Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.

A 12:10 departure sits in the 11am–2pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 78.8%, and AA 1897 runs 4 points better at 82.6%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.

Against the route

AA 1897 next to CLT to RDU

Every carrier on CLT to RDU combined arrived on time 77.4% of the time across 3,070 flights, so AA 1897 is 5 points ahead of it. American flew 3,052 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 77.4% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 8 points.

AA 1897 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 1897thin sample	265	82.6%	58 min	2.26%	B
All American Airlines on CLT–RDU	3,052	77.4%	66 min	1.61%	B
All carriers on CLT–RDU	3,070	77.4%	66 min	1.66%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 1897 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 1897 held fairly steady: 80.7% in Jul–Sep 2025, 84.7% in Oct–Dec 2025 and 83.8% in Jan–Mar 2026. A spread of 4 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202588 flights80.7%
Oct–Dec 202586 flights84.7%
Jan–Mar 202685 flights83.8%
Apr–Jun 20266 flights—

Scale runs 70% to 90%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 1897 ranged from 76.3% on Sunday to 87.2% on Tuesday. With about 38 flights behind each day, a spread of 11 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.

Delay causes

Why AA 1897 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 52% of the 2,596 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
52%
Carrier
41%
Extreme weather
4%
National Airspace System
3%

52% 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 2,596 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 13 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 2,596 delay minutes reported on AA 1897.

Cancellations sit at 2.26% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.00%.

Connections and routes

What a delay on this flight costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.6% 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.

AA 1897 is not only a CLT to RDU flight. It also flew RDU to CLT (261 flights, 79.5% on time) often enough to be scored on its own. Airlines attach one number to several legs of an aircraft's day, and each leg keeps its own record here, so check which city pair is on your booking before reading a rate.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 265 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.

Other routes flown as AA 1897
Also flown as	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
RDU to CLTthin sample	261	79.5%	112 min	2.68%	B

What to do with this

Booking AA 1897

For a booking, read AA 1897 as 82.6% on time with 2.26% cancelled over 265 flights. Those are rates from the past twelve months, not a forecast for any particular day.

Where to go next

A flight number here means American Airlines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.

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.

Key figures