Route reliability record
CLE→CLT
Cleveland to Charlotte
- Flights
- 1,800
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
- Distance
- 430 mi
- Carriers
- 4
This route lands a B, 3 points better than the national rate of 77.6%. About one flight in five arrives 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 1,800 CLE to CLT flights, with a median arrival 11 minutes early.
Best time to fly CLE to CLT: a 5am–8am departure, ideally on a Wednesday. Flights in that window arrived on time 91.4% of the time and Wednesday flights 90.5%, against 80.5% for the route overall.
The US average over the same twelve months is 77.6%, so there is little to separate this route from the country as a whole. The variation that matters here is internal: which carrier, and what time of day.
Key figures
On time
80.5%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 1,757 completed flights
Avg delay
104 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
2.17%
National rate is 1.81%
Best carrier
American
82.7% on time across 1,400 flights
These figures cover 1,800 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 CLE to CLT
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frontier Airlinesthin sample | 80 | 86.2% | 105 min | 0.00% | A+ |
| American Airlines | 1,400 | 82.7% | 102 min | 1.36% | B |
| PSA Airlinesthin sample | 313 | 70.2% | 112 min | 6.39% | C− |
| Envoy Airthin sample | 7 | 28.6% | 33 min | 0.00% | F+ |
Flight by flight
Flights on CLE to CLT
The flight numbers below flew this route at least 250 times in the period, busiest first. Each has its own record, with its schedule and delay causes.
Best ways to make this trip
The most reliable ways to fly Cleveland to Charlotte
Every airline on this route and on the routes between nearby airports, ranked by how often a scheduled flight actually operated and arrived on time. 1 of the top 2 use a different airport at one end.
| Option | Airline | Success | On time | Cancelled | Best departure | Most punctual flight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. CLE → CLTCleveland to Charlotte | American Airlines | 81.6% | 82.7% | 1.36% | 5am–8am, Wed | AA 2021 08:10 |
| 2. CAK → CLTAkron to Charlotte | PSA Airlines | 79.0% | 80.7% | 2.14% | 5am–8am, Wed | OH 5495 06:19 |
Success is the share of scheduled flights that operated and arrived less than 15 minutes late, so a cancelled flight counts against it. “(route)” means the best time comes from every carrier on the route rather than this airline alone.
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 28 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–8am343 flights91.4%
- 8am–11am495 flights88.7%
- 11am–2pm394 flights78.4%
- 2pm–5pm277 flights73.0%
- 5pm–8pm291 flights63.9%
- 8pm–5am—
Scale runs 55% to 95%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
The 5pm–8pm window is where this operation falls apart: 63.9% on time, against 91.4% for the 5am–8am slot. By evening the aircraft flying these rotations have absorbed a full day of small delays and there is no slack left to recover in. The 8am–11am window is the busiest, with 495 flights scheduled in it.
Across the year
When delays peak on this route
This route's year swings by 21 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.
June is the worst month at 70.9% on time, 21 points below September, the best at 91.5%. 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. November was the busiest month here, with 175 flights.
Across the week, Wednesday is the strongest day at 90.5% on time and Sunday the weakest at 75.7%. 15 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 46% of the 35,000 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.
- 46%Late-arriving aircraft
- 42%Carrier
- 6%National Airspace System
- 6%Extreme weather
- 0%Security
46% 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 35,000 reported delay minutes here, that single category outweighs weather by 8 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 35,463 reported delay minutes.
The largest share of delay minutes, 42%, 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 15,000 of the 35,000 delay minutes reported here.
Cancellations sit at 2.17% against a national 1.81%, which is ordinary. Diversions add another 0.22%.
Connections and stage length
What a delay here actually costs
7.9% 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 close to two hours, which a normal layover absorbs.
At 430 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 74.3% on time across 1,799 flights, 6 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 6 points of difference.
The sample behind these figures is 1,800 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.
Work out the risk of missing a connection in CLT after this flight
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 91.5% on time and June 70.9%, a swing of 21 points. If the dates move at all, move them out of June before you think about anything else. 1,757 completed flights over 12 months sit behind that.
Common questions
CLE to CLT questions
How often is CLE to CLT delayed?
About one flight in five arrives at least 15 minutes late, which is the Department of Transportation's definition of a delayed arrival. That works out to 19.5% of the 1,800 flights in this analysis, against 22.4% nationally. Delayed flights are late by close to two hours on average.
How reliable is CLE to CLT compared with the rest of the country?
80.5% of flights arrive on time here against a national 77.6%, a difference of 3 points in its favour. That is worth a B on this site's grading scale.
What time of day has the fewest delays on CLE to CLT?
The 5am–8am departure window is the strongest at 91.4% on time. The 5pm–8pm window is the weakest at 63.9%, 28 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 June delays on CLE to CLT?
June is the weakest month at 70.9% on time, compared with 91.5% in September. Across the year that is 21 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 CLE — the return legseparate record
- Cleveland Hopkins International (CLE) delay statistics
- Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) delay statistics
- American Airlines on CLE to CLT82.7%
- PSA Airlines on CLE to CLT70.2%
- CLE to ORD, a related route74.6%
- MCO to CLT, a related route78.4%
- CLE to ATL, a related route85.4%
- Frontier Airlines on-time record86.2%
- American Airlines on-time record82.7%
- PSA Airlines on-time record70.2%
- 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. CLE to CLT and CLT to CLE are scored separately because they are separate operations, with different departure banks and different aircraft. Compare the return leg.
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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.