Carrier route record
AABOS→CLT
American Airlines · Boston to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,735
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 68%
- Carriers
- 4
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on BOS to CLT lands a B, 6 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 an hour and a half on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,735 flights, with a median arrival 15 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's BOS to CLT record is 6 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 62 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
83.8%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 2,669 completed flights
Avg delay
90 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.34%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
82.6%
Every carrier on BOS to CLT, 4,017 flights
These figures cover 2,735 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 BOS to CLT
American flew 2,735 of the 4,017 flights on BOS to CLT, most of the route. Its 83.8% on time is about level with the route as a whole at 82.6%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of four carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to Spirit at 71.1%. 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.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 5 | 100.0% | — | 20.00% | A− |
| American Airlines (this page) | 2,735 | 83.8% | 90 min | 2.34% | B |
| Republic Airways | 1,199 | 80.5% | 67 min | 3.42% | B− |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 78 | 71.1% | 85 min | 2.56% | C |
Departure window
When American runs best on this route
Departure time matters more here than the choice of carrier. The gap between the best and worst window is 21 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–8am576 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am623 flights87.0%
- 11am–2pm562 flights84.7%
- 2pm–5pm438 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm536 flights76.6%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 65% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 94.3% of the time, against 73.0% for the afternoon window. That is 21 points of difference for no extra money, and it comes from the same aircraft having had no earlier flight to fall behind on. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 623 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on BOS to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 73.1% on time, 19 points below April, the best at 92.3%. 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. May was the busiest month here, with 243 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.7%. 7 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 49% of the 39,000 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.
- 49%Late-arriving aircraft
- 31%Carrier
- 13%National Airspace System
- 7%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
49% 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 39,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 7 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 38,758 reported delay minutes.
The practical consequence: the 5am–8am departure is the one that starts clean. Its aircraft has no earlier leg to be late from, which is exactly why that window shows 94.3% on time here.
Cancellations sit at 2.34% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.07%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
6.9% 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 an hour and a half, which a normal layover absorbs.
The 728 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.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 73.8% on time across 2,735 flights, 10 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 10 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,735 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.
What to do with this
Booking American on BOS to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. April runs 92.3% on time and July 73.1%, a swing of 19 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 2,669 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BOS to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to BOS, the return leg
- Republic Airways on BOS to CLT80.5%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Boston Logan International (BOS) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Why the first flight of the morning is statistically safest
- The best time of day to fly, according to 7.04 million flight records
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.