Route reliability record
BDL→CLT
Hartford to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,673
- Period
- September 2025 to August 2026
- Distance
- 644 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route lands a B, 4 points better than the national rate of 77.3%. About one flight in five arrives 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by an hour and a half on average. That rests on 1,673 BDL to CLT flights, with a median arrival 12 minutes early.
Best time to fly BDL to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Tuesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 89.9% of the time and Tuesday flights 87.4%, against 81.4% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 4 points better than the US average of 77.3%. That gap is worth roughly 41 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
81.4%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,634 completed flights
Avg delay
88 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.15%
National rate is 1.89%
Best carrier
American
81.4% on time across 1,669 flights
These figures cover 1,673 flights between September 2025 and August 2026. The median arrival is 12 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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Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BDL to CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American Airlines | 1,669 | 81.4% | 88 min | 2.16% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 4 | 75.0% | 262 min | 0.00% | B+ |
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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 22 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier.
- 5am–8am479 flights89.9%
- 8am–11am457 flights89.5%
- 11am–2pm117 flights82.3%
- 2pm–5pm367 flights69.4%
- 5pm–8pm253 flights67.7%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 60% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 89.9% of the time, against 67.7% for the evening window. That is 22 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 479 flights scheduled in it.
Explore
Filter BDL to CLT by airline, time, month and day
Pick a breakdown and a carrier. The dashed mark on each row is the same slice for every US flight.
On BDL to CLT, the best departure window is 5am–8am at 89.9% on time and the worst is 5pm–8pm at 67.7%, a wide gap of 22.2 points. All US flights leaving 5am–8am ran 89.3%.
- 5–8am89.9%
- 8–11am89.5%
- 11am–2pm82.3%
- 2–5pm69.4%
- 5–8pm67.7%
- 8pm–5am—
best all US flightsScale 60% to 95%. Cells under 30 flights show a dash.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
July is the worst month at 71.6% on time, 21 points below September, the best at 92.1%. Summer afternoon convection and peak-season schedules land on the same weeks every year, so this is a pattern you can book around rather than a run of bad luck. October was the busiest month here, with 162 flights.
Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 74.1%, a spread of 13 points.
Delay causes
Why this route gets delayed
Carrier accounts for 42% of the 27,000 delay minutes carriers reported here, and the remaining four split what is left.
- 42%Carrier
- 40%Late-arriving aircraft
- 16%National Airspace System
- 2%Extreme weather
40% of delay minutes trace back to a late-arriving aircraft, meaning the plane was already behind before it got here. Across 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 25 to one. The split is drawn from 26,856 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. It accounts for 11,000 of the 27,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.15% against a national 1.89%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.18%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.3% of arrivals land an hour or more late, close to the national 8.3%, so a 60 to 75 minute layover is reasonable here while anything under 45 minutes is a bet. Most delays on this route last an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 644 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 return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 74.6% on time across 1,673 flights, 7 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 7 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,673 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 CLT after this flight
What to do with this
Booking this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.1% on time and July 71.6%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,634 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BDL to CLT questions
How often is BDL to CLT delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 18.6% of the 1,673 flights in this analysis, against 22.7% nationally. Delayed flights are late by an hour and a half on average.
How reliable is BDL to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
81.4% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.3%, a difference of 4 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BDL to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 89.9% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 67.7%, 22 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 July delays on BDL to CLT?
July is the weakest month at 71.6% on time, compared with 92.1% in September. Across the year that is 21 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 BDL — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- BDL to ORD, a related route75.9%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.6%
- BDL to ATL, a related route84.2%
- American Airlines on-time record81.4%
- PSA Airlines on-time record75.0%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.05 million flight records
Direction matters. BDL to CLT and CLT to BDL 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, September 2025 to August 2026. Last updated ; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.