Route reliability record
BHM→CLT
Birmingham to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,779
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 350 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route earns a B. More than four flights in five arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 7 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 1,779 BHM to CLT flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Best time to fly BHM to CLT: a 8am–11am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.1% of the time and Wednesday flights 89.1%, against 84.5% for the route overall.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 69 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,746 completed flights
Avg delay
102 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.80%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
PSA
82.4% on time across 1,114 flights
These figures cover 1,779 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 13 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.
Carrier by carrier
Which airline is most reliable on BHM 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 Airlinesthin sample | 336 | 91.4% | 59 min | 2.98% | A |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 197 | 87.3% | 66 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| PSA Airlines | 1,114 | 82.4% | 116 min | 1.89% | B |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 132 | 80.9% | 75 min | 0.76% | B+ |
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 20 points, against half a point between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am460 flights90.3%
- 8am–11am421 flights91.1%
- 11am–2pm399 flights85.7%
- 2pm–5pm283 flights71.5%
- 5pm–8pm216 flights74.4%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the morning departure. Flights leaving between 8am–11am arrive on time 91.1% of the time, against 71.5% for the afternoon window. That is 20 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 460 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 16 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.
September is the best month on the calendar at 91.3% on time. Shoulder season thins the schedule and takes the summer weather with it, and the operation gets its margin back. October was the busiest month here, with 208 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 89.1% on time and Sunday the weakest at 78.1%. 11 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 60% of the 27,000 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.
- 60%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 5%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
60% 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 27,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 15 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 27,488 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 8am–11am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 91.1% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 1.80% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.06%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.8% 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 350 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 runs 83.8% on time across 1,778 flights, within half a point of this direction. The two legs are scored separately because they usually differ; on this city pair they happen not to.
The sample behind these figures is 1,779 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 91.3% on time and March 75.5%, a swing of 16 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of March before you think about anything else. 1,746 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
BHM to CLT questions
How often is BHM 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 15.5% of the 1,779 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is BHM to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
84.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 7 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on BHM to CLT?
The 8am–11am departure window is the strongest at 91.1% on time. The 2pm–5pm window is the weakest at 71.5%, 20 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 March delays on BHM to CLT?
March is the weakest month at 75.5% on time, compared with 91.3% in September. Across the year that is 16 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 BHM — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on BHM to CLT91.4%
- Envoy Air on BHM to CLT87.3%
- PSA Airlines on BHM to CLT82.4%
- SkyWest Airlines on BHM to CLT80.9%
- BHM to ATL, a related route88.3%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- BHM to DFW, a related route78.6%
- American Airlines on-time record91.4%
- Envoy Air on-time record87.3%
- PSA Airlines on-time record82.4%
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
Direction matters. BHM to CLT and CLT to BHM 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.