Route reliability record
AVL→CLT
Asheville to Charlotte
- Flights
- 870
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 91 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route 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 close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 870 AVL to CLT flights, of which PSA Airlines flew 427 at 85.0% on time.
Best time to fly AVL to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 90.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 91.3%, against 83.0% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 5 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 54 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 847 completed flights
Avg delay
101 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.64%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
85.0% on time across 427 flights
These figures cover 870 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 8.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on AVL to CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 24 | 85.7% | 60 min | 12.50% | A− |
| PSA Airlines | 427 | 85.0% | 107 min | 3.51% | A− |
| American Airlines | 419 | 80.9% | 97 min | 1.19% | B |
PSA Airlines cancels 3.5% of what it schedules here, the highest in the table. A cancelled flight never appears in an on-time rate, so read that column alongside the punctuality one rather than after it.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Asheville to Charlotte
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 3 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. GSP → CLTGreer to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 82.5% | 84.3% | 2.11% | 5am–8am, Thu | — |
| 2. AVL → CLTAsheville to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 82.0% | 85.0% | 3.51% | 5am–8am, Wed | — |
| 3. AVL → CLTAsheville to Charlotte | American Airlines | 79.9% | 80.9% | 1.19% | 8am–11am, Wed | — |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 24 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am429 flights87.5%
- 8am–11am52 flights90.4%
- 11am–2pm60 flights86.0%
- 2pm–5pm70 flights83.8%
- 5pm–8pm222 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am37 flights66.7%
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 90.4% of the time, against 66.7% for the overnight window. That is 24 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 5am–8am window is the busiest, with 429 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 29 points from best month to worst, which is wide. An annual average tells you very little about the week you are actually flying, so read the strip rather than the headline if your dates are fixed.
December is the weak month at 62.1% on time, against 90.9% in January. 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. August was the busiest month here, with 111 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 91.3% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.4%. 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 48% of the 14,000 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.
- 48%Late-arriving aircraft
- 40%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 5%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
48% 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 14,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 10 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 14,471 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 40%, 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 5,731 of the 14,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations run at 2.64%, against 1.81% nationally. That is about one flight in 40 cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
8.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.1%. That is the figure that decides a connection, and it says a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 91 miles this is a short hop, and stage length matters more than it looks. A flight this short spends under two hours in the air, which leaves almost nothing to claw back a late pushback with. Delay here is decided on the ground, in the turn, which is why the 8am–11am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.0% on time across 869 flights, 9 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 9 points of difference.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 870 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: treat all of this as provisional. 870 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 83.0% headline is the most reliable number on the page; the hour and month splits below it are built on a few dozen flights each. 847 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
AVL to CLT questions
How often is AVL to CLT 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 17.0% of the 870 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on AVL to CLT?
PSA Airlines leads at 85.0% on time across 427 flights. American Airlines is at the other end on 80.9%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on AVL to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 90.4% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.7%, 24 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 December delays on AVL to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 62.1% on time, compared with 90.9% in January. Across the year that is 29 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
- CLT to AVL — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- PSA Airlines on AVL to CLT85.0%
- American Airlines on AVL to CLT80.9%
- AVL to ATL, a related route85.8%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- AVL to ORD, a related route71.9%
- Envoy Air on-time record85.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record85.0%
- American Airlines on-time record80.9%
- The US routes with the most cancellations
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
Direction matters. AVL to CLT and CLT to AVL 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.