Route reliability record
CHS→CLT
Charleston to Charlotte
- Flights
- 2,534
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 168 mi
- Carriers
- 3
This route lands a B, 6 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in six arrive 15 minutes late or worse, and those flights are late by close to two hours on average. That is a workable record, not a spotless one. That rests on 2,534 flights, of which American Airlines flew 1,790 at 84.0% on time.
Set against the rest of the country, this route's 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 2,487 completed flights
Avg delay
109 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
1.78%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
84.0% on time across 1,790 flights
These figures cover 2,534 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. The median arrival is 11 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 CLT
The two carriers here are closely matched: 4 points separate the best from the worst. At that spread, schedule and price are better tie-breakers than reliability. Sample sizes are shown so you can see which rows are worth weighing.
| Airline | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Envoy Airthin sample | 175 | 92.3% | 53 min | 3.43% | A− |
| American Airlines | 1,790 | 84.0% | 113 min | 1.45% | B |
| PSA Airlines | 569 | 80.5% | 105 min | 2.28% | B |
No carrier stands out. American tops the table at 84.0%, 4 points clear of the bottom, which is inside the range this kind of sample moves year to year.
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 27 points, against 4 points between the best and worst carrier. Each bar is the on-time rate for flights scheduled inside that window.
- 5am–8am610 flights93.3%
- 8am–11am288 flights88.3%
- 11am–2pm430 flights87.1%
- 2pm–5pm526 flights81.1%
- 5pm–8pm487 flights76.0%
- 8pm–5am193 flights66.7%
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 93.3% of the time, against 66.7% for the overnight window. That is 27 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 610 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 15 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.
December is the weak month at 75.3% on time, against 90.1% in April. Winter delays cluster: a single storm system can account for most of a month's shortfall, so an average December hides both very good weeks and genuinely unflyable days. November was the busiest month here, with 243 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 88.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 80.2%. 8 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 55% of the 44,000 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.
- 55%Late-arriving aircraft
- 36%Carrier
- 8%National Airspace System
- 1%Extreme weather
55% 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 44,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 55 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 43,746 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 36%, 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 16,000 of the 44,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 1.78% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.08%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
6.6% 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 are the close to two hours kind, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 168 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 76.3% on time across 2,536 flights, 8 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 8 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 2,534 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. April runs 90.1% on time and December 75.3%, a swing of 15 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of December before you think about anything else. 2,487 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CHS to CLT questions
How often is CHS to CLT delayed?
About one flight in six arrive at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 16.2% of the 2,534 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
Which airline is most reliable on CHS to CLT?
American Airlines leads at 84.0% on time across 1,790 flights. PSA Airlines is at the other end on 80.5%, a gap of 4 points. Sample size matters as much as the percentage: a rate built from a few hundred flights moves around far more than one built from ten thousand.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CHS to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 93.3% on time. The 8pm–5am window is the weakest at 66.7%, 27 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 December delays on CHS to CLT?
December is the weakest month at 75.3% on time, compared with 90.1% in April. Across the year that is 15 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 CHS — the return legseparate record
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- Envoy Air on-time record92.3%
- American Airlines on-time record84.0%
- PSA Airlines on-time record80.5%
- 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 CLT and CLT 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.