Route reliability record
CHS→ATL
Charleston to Atlanta
- Flights
- 3,213
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 259 mi
- Carriers
- 2
This route earns a 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 13 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. When something does go wrong the average delay runs a little over an hour. That rests on 3,213 flights, with a median arrival 13 minutes early.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's record is 13 points better than the US average of 77.6%. That gap is worth roughly 126 fewer late arrivals for every thousand flights.
Key figures
On time
90.2%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 3,153 completed flights
Avg delay
78 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.65%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
Delta
90.2% on time across 3,210 flights
These figures cover 3,213 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 CHS to ATL
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delta Air Lines | 3,210 | 90.2% | 78 min | 1.65% | A |
| SkyWest Airlinesthin sample | 3 | 66.7% | 25 min | 0.00% | C+ |
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 19 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–8am909 flights94.3%
- 8am–11am710 flights93.7%
- 11am–2pm442 flights92.6%
- 2pm–5pm503 flights84.6%
- 5pm–8pm519 flights85.4%
- 8pm–5am130 flights75.2%
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 75.2% for the overnight window. That is 19 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 909 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 12 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 83.9% on time, 12 points below September, the best at 96.2%. 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. April was the busiest month here, with 294 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 95.2% on time and Sunday the weakest at 84.8%. 10 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 44% of the 24,000 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.
- 44%Late-arriving aircraft
- 33%Carrier
- 19%National Airspace System
- 4%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
44% 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 24,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 12 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 24,047 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 1.65% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
Badly late arrivals are rare here: only 4.2% 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 259 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 83.7% on time across 3,213 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 3,213 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 this route
Put together: the calendar is the biggest lever here, not the carrier or the hour. September runs 96.2% on time and July 83.9%, a swing of 12 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of July before you think about anything else. 3,153 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHS to ATL questions
How often is CHS to ATL delayed?
About one flight in ten arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 9.8% of the 3,213 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by a little over an hour on average.
How reliable is CHS to ATL compared with the rest of the country?
90.2% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 13 points in its favour. That is worth a A on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHS to ATL?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 94.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 75.2%, 19 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 CHS to ATL?
July is the weakest month at 83.9% on time, compared with 96.2% in September. Across the year that is 12 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
- ATL to CHS — the return legseparate record
- Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record90.2%
- SkyWest Airlines on-time record66.7%
- 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. CHS to ATL and ATL to CHS are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Updated monthly. How this data is collected.