Flight number record
AA 2538
American Airlines · Tampa to Charlotte
- Route
- TPA → CLT
- Departs
- 07:15
- Flights
- 340
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
Historical statistics for September 2025 to August 2026, not live status. For today’s AA 2538, check with American Airlines.
AA 2538 earns an A. Nearly every flight arrives inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 17 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about 3.1 hours. That rests on 340 flights, with a median arrival 16 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, AA 2538's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 167 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
94.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 335 completed flights
Avg delay
187 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.47%
National rate is 1.89%
1 hour+ late
3.3%
National rate is 8.3%
These figures cover 340 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 16 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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Schedule
When AA 2538 flies
AA 2538 flies TPA to CLT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:15, used on 137 of 340 flights, with 07:25 (61 flights) and 08:00 (37 flights) next.
- Departs 07:15137 flights40.3%
- Departs 07:2561 flights17.9%
- Departs 08:0037 flights10.9%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 07:15 departure sits in the 5am–8am window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 89.3%, and AA 2538 runs 5 points better at 94.0%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.
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Against the route
AA 2538 next to TPA to CLT
Every carrier on TPA to CLT combined arrived on time 83.7% of the time across 3,037 flights, so AA 2538 is 10 points ahead of it. American flew 2,886 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.6% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.7%, which this flight beats by 19 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA 2538thin sample | 340 | 94.0% | 187 min | 1.47% | A |
| All American Airlines on TPA–CLT | 2,886 | 83.6% | 80 min | 1.52% | B |
| All carriers on TPA–CLT | 3,037 | 83.7% | 79 min | 1.55% | B |
| American Airlines, whole network | 988,892 | 74.7% | 85 min | 2.14% | C |
Across the year
AA 2538 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter AA 2538 held fairly steady: 93.3% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 94.3% in Jan–Mar 2026, 96.7% in Apr–Jun 2026 and 86.8% in Jul–Sep 2026. A spread of 10 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202530 flights93.3%
- Oct–Dec 202590 flights94.4%
- Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.3%
- Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.7%
- Jul–Sep 202639 flights86.8%
Scale runs 80% to 100%.
By weekday, AA 2538 ranged from 87.8% on Sunday to 97.9% on Thursday. With about 49 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Arrival by arrival
How late AA 2538 runs when it is late
AA 2538 often beats the schedule: 185 of 335 completed flights, 55%, arrived 15 minutes or more early. When AA 2538 is late it tends to be very late: 11 of its 20 late arrivals were an hour or more behind, and 8 were two hours or more.
- 15+ min early185 flights55.2%
- Within 15 min130 flights38.8%
- 15–29 min late3 flights0.9%
- 30–59 min late6 flights1.8%
- 1–2 hours late3 flights0.9%
- 2+ hours late8 flights2.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%.
Share of 335 completed flights by arrival against schedule.
A late pushback is often recovered here: of 26 departures that left 15 minutes late or more, 9 still arrived on time. Only 3 left on time and still arrived late.
The worst days
Worst days for AA 2538
The latest arrival of the period was on 25 July 2026, 25 hours 35 minutes behind schedule; most of its delay minutes were filed as carrier-caused (crew, maintenance, fuelling, baggage). The same cause led on four of the five worst days.
| Date | Arrived late by | Largest filed cause |
|---|---|---|
| 25 July 2026 | 25 hours 35 minutes | Carrier |
| 13 May 2026 | 8 hours 51 minutes | Late-arriving aircraft |
| 16 September 2025 | 4 hours 26 minutes | Carrier |
| 31 May 2026 | 4 hours 18 minutes | Carrier |
| 8 March 2026 | 3 hours 14 minutes | Carrier |
Delay causes
Why AA 2538 runs late
Carrier accounts for 81% of the 3,741 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 81%Carrier
- 10%Late-arriving aircraft
- 6%National Airspace System
- 3%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 81%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 3,026 of the 3,741 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 3,741 delay minutes reported on AA 2538.
Cancellations sit at 1.47% against a national 1.89%, 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 3.3% 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.
The 507 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.
The same number turns up on one other city pair in the data, including LGA to CLT (4), but none flew often enough under AA 2538 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to TPA to CLT only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 340 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 AA 2538
For a booking, AA 2538 has one of the better records a US domestic flight can show: 94.0% on time and 1.47% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single day.
Related
Where to go next
- TPA to CLT, every carrier and departure
- CLT to TPA, the return direction
- American Airlines 1704 on the same route90.5%
- Tampa International (TPA) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on-time record
- Every American Airlines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- Worst months to fly in the US, ranked by the data
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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.