Carrier route record
AABWI→CLT
American Airlines · Baltimore to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,809
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Share of route
- 60%
- Carriers
- 6
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s flights, check with American Airlines.
American on BWI to CLT 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 1,809 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, American's BWI to CLT record is 7 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 71 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
84.7%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,772 completed flights
Avg delay
114 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.88%
National rate is 1.81%
Whole route
81.0%
Every carrier on BWI to CLT, 2,998 flights
These figures cover 1,809 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
American against every carrier on BWI to CLT
American flew 1,809 of the 2,998 flights on BWI to CLT, most of the route. Its 84.7% on time is 4 points better than the route as a whole, which runs 81.0%. Ranked by on-time rate it is number two of six carriers on the route, where the range runs from Envoy at 100.0% to PSA at 68.4%. Four 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 | 1 | 100.0% | — | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines (this page) | 1,809 | 84.7% | 114 min | 1.88% | B |
| Southwest Airlines | 967 | 76.7% | 59 min | 1.55% | B |
| Spirit Airlinesthin sample | 24 | 73.9% | 60 min | 4.17% | C− |
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 140 | 69.2% | 112 min | 5.00% | C− |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 57 | 68.4% | 69 min | 0.00% | 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 24 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–8am631 flights92.7%
- 8am–11am303 flights87.9%
- 11am–2pm248 flights86.4%
- 2pm–5pm191 flights79.3%
- 5pm–8pm281 flights74.0%
- 8pm–5am155 flights68.8%
Scale runs 60% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Book the early departure. Flights leaving between 5am–8am arrive on time 92.7% of the time, against 68.8% 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 631 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
American on BWI to CLT through the year
July is the worst month at 70.7% on time, 22 points below September, 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. October was the busiest month here, with 189 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 87.4% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.8%. 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 48% of the 31,000 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
- 41%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 2%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 31,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 21 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 30,910 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 41%, 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 13,000 of the 31,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.88% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.17%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here costs
7.1% 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 361 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 5am–8am window matters as much as it does.
The return leg is a different operation and performs like one: it runs 75.4% on time across 1,809 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.
The sample behind these figures is 1,809 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 BWI to CLT
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 92.3% on time and July 70.7%, a swing of 22 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 1,772 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Related
Where to go next
- BWI to CLT, every carrier
- American on CLT to BWI, the return leg
- Southwest Airlines on BWI to CLT76.7%
- Frontier Airlines on BWI to CLT69.2%
- American Airlines network-wide record
- Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall (BWI) 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.