Flight number record

AA 2538

American Airlines · Tampa to Charlotte

Route: TPA → CLT
Departs: 07:15
Flights: 363
Period: July 2025 to June 2026

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 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 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs close to two hours. That rests on 363 flights, with a median arrival 17 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, AA 2538's record is 17 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 171 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

94.7%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 358 completed flights

Avg delay

124 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

1.38%

National rate is 1.81%

1 hour+ late

2.8%

National rate is 8.1%

These figures cover 363 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 17 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 2538 flies

AA 2538 flies TPA to CLT without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 07:15, used on 102 of 363 flights, with 07:25 (61 flights) and 07:09 (57 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.

Departs 07:15102 flights28.1%
Departs 07:2561 flights16.8%
Departs 07:0957 flights15.7%

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 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 94.7%. Early departures usually start with an aircraft that has not flown yet that day, which is most of why the window does well.

Against the route

AA 2538 next to TPA to CLT

Every carrier on TPA to CLT combined arrived on time 82.9% of the time across 3,204 flights, so AA 2538 is 12 points ahead of it. American flew 2,981 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 83.1% on time. Across its whole network American Airlines managed 74.4%, which this flight beats by 20 points.

AA 2538 against its route and carrier
Compared with	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
AA 2538thin sample	363	94.7%	124 min	1.38%	A
All American Airlines on TPA–CLT	2,981	83.1%	76 min	1.58%	B
All carriers on TPA–CLT	3,204	82.9%	77 min	1.56%	B
American Airlines, whole network	986,297	74.4%	85 min	2.29%	C

Across the year

AA 2538 quarter by quarter

Quarter by quarter AA 2538 held fairly steady: 93.4% in Jul–Sep 2025, 94.4% in Oct–Dec 2025, 94.3% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 96.7% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 3 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.

Jul–Sep 202592 flights93.4%
Oct–Dec 202590 flights94.4%
Jan–Mar 202690 flights94.3%
Apr–Jun 202691 flights96.7%

Scale runs 85% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

By weekday, AA 2538 did best on Monday at 100.0% on time and worst on Sunday at 85.7%. Each day rests on about 52 flights, so a gap of 14 points is worth noticing but could still narrow in another year.

Delay causes

Why AA 2538 runs late

One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 75% of the 2,351 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.

Carrier
75%
Late-arriving aircraft
16%
National Airspace System
9%

The largest share of delay minutes, 75%, 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 1,767 of the 2,351 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 2,351 delay minutes reported on AA 2538.

Cancellations sit at 1.38% 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 2.8% 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 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. 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.

Every one of the 363 flights under AA 2538 in the data flew TPA to CLT. The number was not reused on any other city pair, which makes this a clean record of one route.

One caution: this is a thin sample. 363 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: 94.7% on time and 1.38% cancelled. That is a base rate, not a promise about any single 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