Carrier route record

AABHM→CLT

American Airlines · Birmingham to Charlotte

Flights: 336
Period: July 2025 to June 2026
Share of route: 19%
Carriers: 4

Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.

American on BHM to CLT earns an A. Close to nine flights in ten arrive inside the 15-minute window the DOT uses to define an on-time arrival, which puts it 14 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs about an hour. That rests on 336 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.

Set against the rest of the country, American's BHM to CLT record is 14 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 138 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.

On time

91.4%

Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 326 completed flights

Avg delay

59 min

Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights

Cancelled

2.98%

National rate is 1.81%

Whole route

84.5%

Every carrier on BHM to CLT, 1,779 flights

These figures cover 336 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 15 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

American against every carrier on BHM to CLT

American flew 336 of the 1,779 flights on BHM to CLT, about 19% of it. Its 91.4% on time is 7 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 84.5%. Ranked by on-time rate it is first of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from American at 91.4% to SkyWest at 80.9%. Two of those carriers flew fewer than 365 flights here, so treat their positions as rough.

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.

On-time performance by carrier on BHM to CLT
Airline	Flights	On time	Avg delay	Cancelled	Grade
American Airlines (this page)thin 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

When American runs best on this route

Departure time is the single lever a traveller controls, and it moves the odds more than most people expect. Each bar below is the on-time rate for flights scheduled to leave inside that window, across 336 flights.

5am–8am132 flights90.8%
8am–11am151 flights90.4%
11am–2pm43 flights95.0%
2pm–5pm10 flights—
5pm–8pm—
8pm–5am—

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

The 11am–2pm window is the strongest at 95.0% on time. The full set of windows spans 5 points.

Across the year

American on BHM to CLT through the year

Jul–Sep 202552 flights96.1%
Oct–Dec 2025153 flights88.2%
Jan–Mar 202661 flights98.1%
Apr–Jun 202670 flights89.9%

Scale runs 80% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.

Monthly volumes are too low here to break the year into twelve reliable readings. What the twelve-month total says is 91.4% on time across 336 flights.

Quarter by quarter American on BHM to CLT held fairly steady: 96.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 88.2% in Oct–Dec 2025, 98.1% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 89.9% in Apr–Jun 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.

Across the week, Tuesday is the strongest day at 95.8% on time and Saturday the weakest at 82.1%. 14 points is a smaller lever than departure hour, but it is free.

Delay causes

Why American runs late on this route

One category carries most of the weight here. Late-arriving aircraft accounts for 43% of the 1,648 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.

Late-arriving aircraft
43%
Carrier
26%
National Airspace System
21%
Extreme weather
10%

43% 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 1,648 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 4 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 1,648 reported delay minutes.

Cancellations run at 2.98%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in 30 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 costs

Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 2.5% 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.

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 11am–2pm window matters as much as it does.

The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 82.5% on time across 335 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. 336 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 American on BHM to CLT

Put together: the delay figures matter less here than the 2.98% cancellation rate. A late arrival costs you about an hour; a cancelled flight costs you the day. Book the 11am–2pm departure so there is still a schedule behind you if it goes wrong, and treat a same-day connection as optimistic. 326 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.

Where to go next

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